


Soon As I Get Home

by flickerthenflare



Category: Glee
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe, F/M, Families of Choice, Family, Friendship, M/M, Romance, Step-siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 12:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1305556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flickerthenflare/pseuds/flickerthenflare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of an argument, Kurt and Finn’s world of color turns gray around them. Finn thinks they’re supposed to stay and learn a valuable lesson, while Kurt just wants to go home. A mash-up between Pleasantville and Wizard of Oz.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for homophobia, bullying, minor/non-graphic violence
> 
> There’s no mention or allusion to Finn's death, just celebration of life. The story runs parallel to a lot of Finn’s storyline on Glee, particularly the pieces shared with Kurt. Characters express frustration with each other and say unkind things that do not reflect the author’s views. Thanks to ileliberte for the fantastic beta job!

Finn is first to regain speech at their black and white surroundings. “Maybe it’s like _It’s a Wonderful Life_ and we’re supposed to see how good we have it.”

“ _Wizard of Oz_. But in reverse.” Kurt holds a hand over his dropped jaw. If the switch to a colorless world didn’t leave him with an unshakeable sense of unease, Kurt would happily spend the evening affecting a Judy Garland accent and fantasizing about meeting Glinda the Good Witch. Instead he just stares.

“Is there a lesson in that one? We’re supposed to learn something here; that’s how alternate dimensions work.”

Kurt arches an eyebrow. Finn is an expert on alternate dimensions now? “It’s a _movie_ , Finn.”

“I’m serious. Maybe if we know what the lesson is supposed to be ahead of time, we can speed through learning it. Until then, it won’t hurt to think about how good we have it.”

Finn gives a decisive nod and closes his eyes. Kurt rolls his. Of course Finn elects himself leader of their little lost party of two. He creates strategies to deal with the zombie apocalypse and the regular apocalypse and nuclear war: getting stuck in a fairytale lesson must be one of the lesser-known preparedness plans.

“Click your heels together,” Kurt instructs. “You might as well do this right.”

Unsurprisingly, Finn’s sneakers do not have magical properties.

“You’re supposed to say ‘there’s no place like home’.”

Finn repeats the saying with a questioning lilt at the end. The magic words don’t work for Finn, so Kurt tries. He can’t say it without sounding sardonic.

“Put a little feeling into it,” Finn coaxes.

“I’m trying. Let me think.” He focuses on getting back to his dad and tries again. It doesn’t work for him either. He can’t convince himself he wants to be in Lima. The best he can do is wish to be _not here_ , wherever here is.

Kurt really hopes this isn’t a lesson about how good his life is – that is a depressing thought right there and he is not about to repent for thinking he has a crappy arrangement at the moment. He spends his days harassed by his peers and nights fretting over his father’s health and the changes in his family that’ll make home a place he has to share.

For a moment he wonders if the colorless world where he ended up is the solution instead, a drab answer to a wish to escape Lima, Ohio and colors are the toll. Their new world seems serene. No immediate signs of danger to put Finn’s zombie apocalypse training into effect, although the world outside is pitch black and Kurt tries not to think on what they’ll do if the sun doesn’t come up in the morning.

“Do you dream in color?” Finn asks. “Quinn told me once that she only dreams in black and white. Maybe we’re dreaming.”

Kurt thinks back to any fashion-related nightmares. He can’t recall color being centrally featured even then, but surely he would have noticed a lack of color. The lack is too obvious to not remember.

“I don’t dream in tandem,” he answers instead. Brittany and Santana have claimed to, but they have their not-at-all-secret sexy connection and Brittany is often divorced from reality in her waking moments, which puts them in circumstances far more prone to heightened reality than his with Finn.

“Perhaps it’s something you’ve _done_ to drain the world of color,” Kurt says. All problems have a root. One moment the world was in color and the next it was in black and white, and they – most likely _Finn_ – must have done something to make the switch happen.

Finn takes Kurt’s suggestion seriously. “You think if I give the remote back to you, we’ll go back?”

Kurt holds out his hand expectantly.

Their parents told Finn and Kurt to check in on each other while they went on their honeymoon, and Finn accepted the request easier than Kurt and stopped by the Hummel house while Kurt live-blogged _Project Runway_. Kurt let him in, but reluctantly. Without their parents around, it’s easier to feel like Finn is intruding on Kurt’s old life rather than building a new one with him. They don’t have to try to live together again yet. Finn thought it’d be amusing to hold the remote above his head to tease Kurt about wanting to change the channel, but the reminder of how Finn's size and strength could be used against him didn't endear the giant oaf to him – giddy, affectionate smile be damned. Kurt wouldn't lower his dignity to jump for it, and snapped at Finn instead. He didn’t see the affection in being mocked. Fighting isn't how he plays, so he doesn’t pull punches when he intends to win.

He knows he hurt Finn’s feelings – it registered as plainly as any emotion Finn feels, ever, does on his open face – but Kurt refuses to feel a twinge of guilt.

Finn glances around. “I don’t have it anymore. Are we supposed to find it? Like a quest? We get the remote and we win?”

“If so, we’ve been on this quest before. You left it in the fridge.” Finn Hudson, neutral chaotic force in his life. They’re not even living together yet.

They don’t find the remote in the fridge, or in or around the couch, or in the yard, and their frantic pace becomes more and more resigned. The sun coming up in gray and filtering in light but not even a hint of color baffles Kurt. Daylight should be reassuring but it underscores how different their environment truly is.

Finn checks the fuse box in case “we blew something we’ve never heard of” and returns saying, “I think it’s a metaphorical fuse because the real ones are fine.”

Kurt scoffs at Finn’s attempt to lead. Finn’s explanations aren’t even rooted in reality. _They’re_ not rooted in reality. They’re in Oz in reverse. They’ve been yanked from a town backwards enough it might as well be a 1930s farm, and fate doesn’t even have the decency to hand them a wonderful new world to explore but the same place only more monotonous.

He holds his hand over his mouth as he stares down the sun. The sun isn’t meant to look like that. It still casts light but there’s no warmth in its appearance.

“Don’t freak out, okay?” Finn says in that gentle tone he uses so often to show he’s not as intimidating as his size implies, and Kurt’s about to bite that he’s doing no such thing when Finn adds, “We’re in this together, and this is just temporary. Stop worrying about forever and focus on right now.”

Kurt takes the deep breath he’s supposed to take. He stops thinking about the sun rising without being yellow. He curses Finn and the damned remote control they fought over instead.

***

Even with the world switched around, Finn insists that it wouldn’t be right to skip school. They want to see what else is different besides the lack of color, don’t they, in order to figure out what happened?

“Once we figure out what kind of dimension we jumped to, we can figure out how to go back. There’s an order we have to do this in,” Finn argues. Finn is not super into books all the time, but he’ll make an exception for anything with dimension jumps or unplanned futures that come suddenly: Narnia; _Lost_ post-crash landing followed by nothing making sense for years, or the kids’ version of _Lost_ with the kid from _High School Musical_ ; The Oz books he read when he was a gangly 10 year old as long as he was in the privacy of his own home so no one would make fun. There’s a routine in all the stories: get your bearing, figure out the rules, then get out.

Despite his trepidation surrounding high school at the moment – and his proclivity to being contrary – Kurt lets Finn usher him out the door.

In the car, Finn counts out on his fingers. “Printers that are running out of ink. Cheap school newsletters, although usually they’ll try to trick you by putting it on colored paper. The past. Oreos. Oreo cheesecake. Um…. X-ray vision is usually green and black, and I don’t see your insides so probably not that one. Old photos. Vampires when they’re running out of blood to keep them alive. _The Twilight Zone_. That Madonna video you recreated. Which of those do you think we’re in?”

Finn listed the Oreo cheesecake to get a laugh, but it doesn’t come. Finn’s grin at his own cleverness falters under Kurt’s lackluster response. Kurt would love living in an Oreo cheesecake given how much cheesecake he can eat, and he usually laughs at Finn’s dumb jokes, but instead he grips the steering wheel tighter than the smile he forces. Since Kurt won’t help him without freaking out more than he already is, Finn goes through his potential universe-altering scenarios on his own. Someone has to keep their cool in situations like this. Kurt’s white knuckles around the steering wheel of the Navigator tell Finn that it's clearly not his future stepbrother.

“It’s going to be okay,” Finn promises because that seems like a thing he’s supposed to say. Like that’s ever calmed anyone down. Kurt does this thing where he kind of shuts down and just emotes discontent and judgment, like now, driving to the school that's not really theirs, and telling Kurt it’s going to be okay doesn’t stop him from pulling inward and shutting Finn out. 

“Try to stop worrying,” he adds. “You’re gonna start spiraling if you keep that up.”

Kurt gives no indication he hears a word out of Finn’s mouth. Unfortunately, it’s not even that unexpected. Kurt’s been worrying every adult in their lives who cares about him – even Mr. Schue and Finn thought his interest in Kurt was touch and go – and Finn’s mom and Burt both told Finn to look out for Kurt while they were gone on their honeymoon. His mom repeated the request the night before they left in a much more urgent tone than when she told him not to stay up too late or invite friends over.

_“He’s going to be your brother in less than 24 hours,”_ she reminded. Finn noncommittally mumbled his understanding; the engagement was rushed, but he comprehended that much. They’re friends and all – they spent the whole year prior figuring out how to be friends – but being brothers signs him up to care for Kurt for the rest of his life. That's a big commitment for someone else to make for him and then not even hand him a how-to guide.

His mom’s lecture didn’t end there, though.

_“This is your chance to re-determine what your relationship is going to be, honey. How many times did you ask me for a little brother growing up? I finally came through.”_

Finn glances sideways at Kurt and his tense grip on the steering wheel. He likes the idea of starting fresh with Kurt, even if he didn’t have a picture of what their relationship should be.Mostly, Finn figured his oft-wished-for little brother should want to spend time with him. He tried for that, since it doubled as checking in on Kurt. Unfortunately, Finn thought that teasing was something brothers were supposed to be able to do – according to Puck, it's the best part of having a little sister – but Kurt doesn’t seem to agree.

Finn’s voice is gentle when he tries again. “Maybe it’ll go better if we think of this as an adventure?”

Kurt checks his blind spot with a weary sigh but doesn’t respond. He's too early in their journey to seem so exhausted. Finn doesn't know how far they have to go, but stories he's read like this are rarely simple; they're just beginning. 

“Or like a mission? A secret mission, even! That’d be cool.”

“I don’t want to play pretend.” Kurt’s breath hitches. He swallows visibly. “I don’t want to make the best of it. Our parents are going to come back and they’re going to wonder why we skipped town. I can’t do that to my dad. He has enough to worry about.”

“They’re going to be gone all week; we have plenty of time. We’ll make a plan. And then we’ll stick to it. You can give me all the rules you want.”

Kurt nods until he finds his voice again. “No wandering off. You’re not leaving me in your supernatural novella just because it seems normal at first.”

We’ll stick together the whole day no matter how ordinary,” Finn promises. “What else?”

Kurt calms down a little with his death grip on the wheel at the prospect of order. Rules are good for both of them, then. Finn can work with rules. He likes having things clearly defined as to how they're supposed to be too. 

“We leave if there’s something else wrong besides the color,” Kurt adds.

“We need to do a little investigating if we want to get anywhere.”

“Immediately,” Kurt insists. 

“And we stick together.”

“You already said that one.”

“Not just physically,” Finn explains. “We’re in this together all the way.”

There’s a beat before Kurt nods. “No fighting.”

“Good. What does the _Project Runway_ guy say? Make it work?”

Finn gets the smile he aims for. It feels like victory even if it doesn’t stick.

***

The local school isn’t McKinley, but they find it just the same and recognize some but not all of the students once inside. That isn’t to say people are as they expect them to be. In this colorless world, Puck has hair. Not only that, but well-kept hair. Kurt almost doesn’t recognize Mercedes without any Technicolor leopard print as a homing beacon. Tina dresses preppy with no sign of an ironic twist or goth undertones. All the students dress preppy, actually. Even Rick the Stick and Homeless Brett. Not one of these well-dressed students provokes a fight in the hallway. No one yells. No one snickers at Kurt for daring to exist or pays the two of them any mind.

Finn nudges Kurt’s side. “See? You might like it better here. No one’s bothering you and they’re following some unwritten dress code.”

Kurt bristles at the suggestion.

“Do you think there's a uniform requirement?” Finn looks down at his formerly-red sneakers. 

“Yeah. Wear gray.” They have that part of the dress code covered. They do stand out a bit, though, even in their muted shades: Finn too casual, and Kurt too outlandish. Clothes vary, but in a small range.

By Kurt’s standards it’s weird enough for them to flee, but not for Finn. Finn looks so relaxed by Kurt’s side as he takes in the new world. Unlike Kurt, Finn takes the change at face value: the other students are clearly not zombies, so how could they be any harm? The vision before Kurt is a blessed change over the usual slobbishness of the student population but still sets Kurt on edge. They’re too polite, too cheerful, to seem real. Everyone dressing like they care seems like something Kurt would wish for, but fashion doesn’t pop the same without creative use of color and he can’t shake the feeling that he shouldn’t get too comfortable.

“Finn, are you sure you’re not dreaming?” Kurt asks as people he’d barely count as acquaintances offer him high fives in the hall. He keeps his voice as low as he can but Finn’s height puts him out of whispering range. “There are people we know here but they’re not the same; that happens in dreams. Tell me you were fantasizing about becoming more popular than you already are when you fell asleep reading a J Crew catalog.”

“They’re not _ominous_ high fives,” Finn laughs. “Just go with it.”

They’re still unfathomable to Kurt. When he gingerly high five someone back, he isn’t hit in the face. No one laughs. If it’s a joke, he can’t spot the punch line.

The place grows more peculiar as the day continues. The students listen to every word Mr. Schuester says, taking notes even though Kurt has a hunch some of the facts Mr. Schuester gives are wrong. Kurt’s hand shoots into the air when Mr. Schuester cheerfully dismisses their class with directions for boys to go to Shop and girls to go into Home Economics. Finn grabs it back down before Mr. Schuester can call on him.

“Just go to Shop, okay? Try to fit in.”

Kurt wrenches his hands away. “I don’t want to go to Shop. It’s boring and I’m not dressed for it. There’s sawdust in there.”

“We agreed we’d hang out together today just in case. We’ll be in Shop together.”

Kurt relents with only a brief protest of, “But what if the remote’s in Home Ec?” He follows Finn out into the hall of preppy doppelgängers.

Kurt freezes at his most dedicated tormentor’s approach. After a couple steps, Finn realizes Kurt is no longer at his side. He turns in confusion until he finds Kurt shrunk into his shadow.

“He’s here too.” Kurt’s voice is barely audible. Dread rises so high and fast in Kurt he almost chokes. “This is so _unfair_. Why did he have to follow me?”

Finn cranes his neck but he figures it out soon enough. Karofsky passes without giving them a second look.

“Maybe he doesn’t…”

“Why did you bring us both here? Couldn’t you have left one of us behind?”

Finn holds his hands up at the accusation to show his blamelessness.

Karofsky provides definitive proof that this place isn’t a dreamland. He’s not better off here than back home if Karofsky’s around.

The other form of definitive proof comes in Glee practice when Kurt, uncharitably, asks Rachel upon arrival, “What solo are we swaying behind you for today?”

Rachel folds her hands primly in her lap. She recites, as if by memory, “We sing as a choir. No one has solos. It wouldn’t be fair for one person to have all the attention.”

This place, whatever it is, tamed Rachel Berry. Kurt has to get out of here.


	2. Chapter 2

Finn just wants them to blend in: figure out how this place works incognito, no extra attention drawn to them. Easier said than done when Kurt is involved.

Kurt snips at Rachel again during Glee Club – way-too-contained Rachel who lets Mr. Schuester lead the Glee Club and has yet to make a demand for even a two-bar solo – for correcting him for singing with the girls’ line. Finn is going to have to get him to chill out and tone it down to keep the whole town from hating them. All she did was over-helpfully tell him he was making a mistake.

Rachel’s hair whirls and hits Tina in the face as she turns to huff, “You’re being unkind! I just want to publicly acknowledge that!”

Back home, no one would discourage Kurt from putting down Rachel if they managed to notice a snide remark thrown her way among their chaos, but here all eyes fall on Kurt, a twinge of guilt evident on his face, and a hush falls over the room.

“You have to apologize. It’s irresponsible not to,” Quinn scolds.

Finn expects it to be a warning with no consequences, much like any other warning they give each other in Glee Club, but they don’t resume again until Kurt does. Then Mr. Schuester encourages Rachel to _blend_ and Kurt, remembering his agreement with Finn to fit in, tries his best too. Rachel makes no further argument about the slight or being told how to sing. It seems good behavior extends even to the poster child for not sharing well. They resume singing and not a single voice is discernable from another. Not even Rachel’s.

Finn smiles encouragingly at her; they’ve been working on this.

Rachel stares openly at Finn from that moment on, barely blinking throughout rehearsal. Kurt has the same stare – like he can will something to come to him but knows he can’t ask – and Rachel reminding him of Kurt is disconcerting. She doesn’t stop staring as they move through the choreography, just tilts her head to keep him in sight. He knows Rachel loves him, but he hasn’t seen her mystified by him like this in ages. Usually she has solos to distract her.

She pulls all of Finn’s focus as well. She’s the same yet not. The loneliness is easier to spot without so much intensity covering it up. She doesn’t say another word after blowing up at Kurt. She behaves, but she doesn’t seem friendly with their teammates.

The Rachel he knows – Original Rachel – is tiny but she takes up a lot of space, and not only because their friends give her a wide berth in case she flings her arms dramatically in song. She commands attention and no one is going to stick her at the end of a chorus line just to keep them ordered by height. Except they have. Put Rachel at the end and she’ll pull focus. Except she doesn’t. She blends as she’s told.

“You’re at the end, Rachel,” Mr. Schue reminds her when she slips toward the center of their formation.

Rachel switches places with Tina. 

“Okay, let's start again at the beginning!”

Is this the Rachel who hasn't dated him? They can't be dating with how shy she acts each time their eyes briefly meet before she looks away like she _hasn't_ been blatantly staring. They’ve only spent a day apart, but he doesn’t think Rachel has ever left him alone this long before without explicitly spelling out the distance between them as a consequence to something he did.

Finn intends to rectify the situation immediately by dating her again. He moves toward her as soon as Glee Club practice is over. Finn doesn’t protest when Kurt impatiently announces his departure for the library with a hissed warning of “Don’t get too attached to a world we’re going to leave” before he stalks off in the opposite direction: they’ll work on their stick-together attitude later and cross fingers on not separately jumping dimensions in the meantime.

 “Can I sit by you?” Finn asks.

Back home, he never has to pursue her; she pursues him. That’s how they work. Maybe he sings a song at her to maintain her interest, but the Rachel he is used to seeing supplies the (intense) energy that maintains their relationship. Here, all it takes is a nudge. Just a nudge, and she looks at him the way she does back home. She pushes her book bag to the ground with a loud thud to make room for him and gives him her winning smile that’s so forcefully cheerful he assumes it hurts. “If you want.”

“I’m really glad you're here,” Finn tells Rachel even though it won't make sense to her. It's still true. She'll get that it's a compliment. He's not great at giving compliments that sound good or even make sense, but he tries. Nonsensical is better than none at all. “You look really pretty today.”

“Thank you.” Rachel folder her hands over her knee. The barely contained thrum of energy around her even as she composes herself is familiar. She’s holding back from saying something. It doesn’t take long for her to spill. “Is this a prelude to asking me on a date? I’d like to prepare myself if that’s the case. My feigned surprise face is not as attractive as my face when I’m actually surprised. It takes a moment to get composed, and I’d prefer to compose myself now, please.”

He holds back a laugh. So different and yet very much the same. “A date could be cool, right? Depending on what you want to do. Are malt shops actually a thing?”

“Yes. Okay.” She schools her smile into an expressionless mask. “You may ask.”

Finn chokes back a mirthful laugh at seeing Rachel try to hide her feelings from him like she hasn’t in ages.

She tosses her long hair and looks expectantly up at him, and her impatience when it comes to getting something she wants is so familiar to him even here.

“Rachel Berry, can I take you on a date to the malt shop of your choice?”

Rachel beams with a brightness usually reserved for when she’s performing. “It’s even better to hear it when it’s real! Quinn told me this would happen once I learned to keep my mouth shut. I told her my mouth is my best feature because if it’s shut you can’t hear how breathtaking my voice is, but I’m glad I listened.” She belatedly clamps her mouth closed with a muted, high-pitched squeal behind clenched teeth and a hand flung over her mouth. She looks up at him with wide, panicked eyes.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.” Finn drops to the sticky, coke-washed floor so they’re on the same level. “I like hearing you talk. Can I kiss you? If your mouth is your best feature and all…” Finn smiles crookedly at his own cleverness.

She does the staring thing again that Finn associates with her wanting something, which makes Finn hopeful.

“I’m not supposed to brag, but if you were to brag about me of your own volition, I think that’d be okay.” She closes her eyes and waits for him to close the gap.

***

Hidden behind all the books is a boy.

He sits under the fantasy section engrossed in his own world. Kurt originally thought the library was deserted and then there he was. Kurt tries to be mindful of not disturbing his silent companion while skimming book after book, checking to see if the books are the same as he expects them to be. Kurt is determined to poke as many holes in this world as possible. See what pokes back.

Kurt doesn’t know any of the books well enough to say for certain, but the ones he finds seem right. The ones he doesn’t find raise more questions: nothing remotely controversial makes it onto the shelves. At McKinley at least some of the books exist under the presumption that they will never be read. With a deep breath for courage, he turns to his silent companion.

“I don’t think we know each other?” Kurt doesn’t know who he knows anymore.  He hesitates before starting conversations.

The boy closes his book. He has the widest eyes Kurt has seen on anyone other than Ms. Pillsbury, with the same sweet, attentive expression she wears as a default. “No, we don’t.” He stands to offer his hand to Kurt. “Hi, I’m Blaine.”

“Kurt. Do you know where something like a book by the Grimm brothers is?” He’ll recognize if the stories from his childhood are the same. He knows those by heart.

“You want a fairytale, then.” Blaine tips his head in appraisement before leaning in and whispering conspiratorially, “They’re actually in the non-fiction section. Isn’t that great? Fairytales belong with the real books.”

Kurt feels bold enough at Blaine’s cheerful approach to offering direction to ask, with just a slight hesitation, “Where are the gay books?”

Blaine seems calm about the question, but maybe he just has exceptionally good library behavior. “I don’t think there are any. In either section. If they are here, I haven’t found them yet.” His apologetic smile could soothe most disappointments. “I’m usually in the fantasy section.”

“And they’re not in this section?”

“Not in most people’s fantasies, I suppose.”

_And yet you’re in Finn’s._ Assuming they are in Finn’s dream and that’s why color is gone and their friends are different versions of themselves. Did Finn’s mind conjure this boy for Kurt as a make-good for dragging him into a hokey old movie setting? Finn picked the physical opposite of himself: compact where Finn’s lanky, with wintry coloring and a shallower profile and more curl to his hair than the conservative style implies. The end result, while not Kurt’s usual type, leads Kurt’s eyes across the room since he arrived and tugs at Kurt’s thoughts to want more from Blaine than just directions.

“If you were a book…” Kurt can’t help a coy slide of his shoulders.

Blaine returns a smile of his own. “I’ve been told I’m easy to read.”

_Those eyes._ Kurt believes it. Kurt thinks Blaine might actually be flirting back; Kurt is back to thinking he’s in a dream now that Blaine has entered the picture. A colorless dream with Blaine-highs and Karofsky-lows. He’ll gladly hide in the library with Blaine until he wakes up.

“Kurt?” Finn calls. “Kurt, I’m here!” His voice carries in the otherwise serene room.

“You don’t yell in a library, Finn!” Kurt yells back just as loudly.

The librarian shushes them both.

Blaine withdraws back to his book. “I’ll see you later?”

Kurt flashes a smile at him as he retreats. “I’ll come back for the fairytales. Thank you!”

Finn waits by the door.

“Who’s that? We don’t know him.”

“Then how’d you conjure him?” Kurt not recognizing everyone makes sense if they’re in Finn’s mind, but Finn had to create him from somewhere.

“If I intentionally put us here, I would tell you, and you could just as easily be the cause,” Finn argues.

Kurt disagrees: everyone behaves in some antiquated, predictable way they’re supposed to: this has Finn written all over it. Kurt wouldn’t drop color out of the universe. Without Blaine distracting him with a dazzling smile, what Blaine said about the books sinks in.

“It’s not me. I wouldn’t have, because –” He interrupts himself when he spots the closest person to a responsible adult they have. “Excuse me,” he calls out into the emptying hallway as Ms. Pillsbury comes toward them. “Where are the books with gay themes?”

Ms. Pillsbury adjusts the lines of her blouse with a smooth of her hands. “We don’t organize books by how happy the endings are but I find the covers very helpful in that area. Although _Romeo and Juliet_ is often deceptive on that one: let me tell you, it’s a downer.” With a helpful smile she continues on down the hallway.

Kurt glares pointedly at Finn.

“So? I don’t think McKinley had those either.”

“Did you hear what she said? She didn’t even know what I meant. I’m not unwanted here – I don’t freaking exist!” He does as far as Blaine is concerned – he knows Blaine understood his meaning when he asked where they gay books were – but kind, handsome Blaine is also possibly a figment of either his or Finn’s imagination.

“It’s like the 50s or something, dude. Or someone’s idea of the 50s. I don’t know what they were actually like, but maybe it’s for the best. No one’s going to pick on you for something that doesn’t exist. You can fit in here. And it’s not like dating was really an option for you before.”

Kurt jerks like he’s been stung. Why Finn’s cavalier comments – hurtful despite their helpful intentions – even still register is beyond him. He knows no one in Lima would want to date him. Here, he is officially one of a kind except for the boy he possibly made up.

Keys in hand, Kurt strides with renewed purpose toward the parking lot.

“I wonder if New York is changed. We can’t tell from the TV, we have to go.” If they go far enough, will colors bleed back in?

Finn hurries to keep up. “You can’t just run away to New York. You’ve never been, so you won’t be able to tell if it’s normal or not.”

“I think I’ll notice color!” Kurt snaps back. He hates Finn in the role of Voice of Reason. Something is wrong with this world and they’ve wasted a full day with no apparent gain. So much of his life of late is about surviving from Point A to Point B. Kurt grips his keys tightly. He’ll drive until he finds a new Point B.

He zigs through the tightly parked cars in the parking lot that Finn’s long uncoordinated limbs struggle to avoid.

They’re almost to the Navigator when Finn catches up. “Stop. Do you think this world doesn’t have consequences? You can’t leave!”

Kurt’s wants aren’t defined enough to inform what he’ll do when he gets there. Every fiber of his being is focused on _get out, get out, get out_. He has no reason to stay: there’s no sign of his dad and what does homelessness matter when this place isn’t home either?

He always thought if he worked hard – suffered through his profoundly-lacking education, paid his back-row-swaying dues, showed up every day despite the dread in the pit of his stomach, held his head high – he’d eventually get the pay off. He’d get out of Lima. There would be someplace better for. He could aim for his name in stage lights or on the pages of Vogue where he’d be lauded as a creative genius instead of just a freak.

He leans against the Navigator when he reaches it, forgetting his own rule about getting fingerprints on its exterior. It feels comfortingly like home under his fingertips. It may be missing color like the rest of this god-forsaken world, but it’s always been black. With the Navigator under his fingertips he feels like he can breathe again. He’ll take his car and he’ll go to New York. Once there is nothing familiar left besides the car that will get him there, he’ll know how to rebuild his life.

Finn leans a hand against the door to prevent Kurt from opening it. “It’s just color. Why are you freaking out so bad?”

“Does Broadway even exist here?” What is he working toward if not that? Kurt drops his head back against his car even though it will smear his hairspray across the glass.

Finn thinks Kurt’s distress over the potential loss of theatre is funny, Kurt can tell by the quirk of his lip, but he thankfully keeps it to himself.  “We’ll look it up. We don’t have to go there to know.” Finn holds out his hand. “Give me your keys, man. I’m driving from now on.”

Kurt clenches his hand tighter around the key ring. He knows when he’s being placated. He’s _man_ and _dude_ here more often than he’s ever been. Metal digs into his palm.

Finn slides against the door until their shoulders almost touch. “I don’t want you to leave. I don’t know why we’re here but I know we’re supposed to stick together. That’s what we agreed to.”

Finn only touches him when he wants to control him, Kurt thinks bitterly. Which isn’t true – Finn isn’t capable of emotional manipulation – it’s that Finn’s affection is unpredictable and he’s better about giving it than receiving.

Kurt’s hand shakes and his grip on the car keys with it. He doesn’t want to deny Finn. Or give in too easily. His fondness of Finn is tentative to make sure it stays on the right side of the line between affectionate and overbearing, to love him but not too much. To let Finn have the right amount of sway so he’s not denying him unfairly but he’s not building his world around him either.

“I’m not going to New York, and you’re not leaving me.” Finn’s palm stays outstretched.  “C’mon. We’re taking you to your house, and then we’re figuring out how to get _home_.”

Finn’s tone is gentle once again. Maybe he’s trying to find the line as well, so that showing Kurt that he cares about him isn’t the same as toying with him.

Kurt hands over the keys. He’ll stick with Finn. With the keys out of his hands, he has no other option.


	3. Chapter 3

Kurt makes warm milk to calm his shaky nerves as the world around them approaches blackness once again. The constant stirring gives his hands something to do. He has a hard time sleeping in unfamiliar places; the warm milk is supposed to help, or at least distract. They’ve been running on no sleep since they arrived, but he doesn’t want to let Finn out of his sight in an empty, too big house that switched around them so suddenly and for no fathomable reason. Their parents are still nowhere to be seen. Maybe they're on their honeymoon here too, or maybe Finn didn't think them into being when he sucked Kurt with him into the land without color.

Finn puts too much cinnamon on top of his glass but Kurt doesn’t tell him to stop. He smirks instead at the cloud of cinnamon dust that should be ruddy brown instead of the same dull gray as the milk.

“Cheers.” Finn raises his glass with too much cinnamon. “Here’s to figuring it out tomorrow.”

“Amen to that.” He lifts his warm milk to his lips and loses himself in his small comfort. One day away from home. Maybe one day penance for fighting with Finn – if lesson-learning is a reliable mode of transportation when it comes to alternate dimensions like Finn believes, he doesn't doubt that’s why they're here - will be enough.

Finn downs half the glass in one swallow.

Kurt stares at his own half-empty glass. The warm milk offers calm but no clarity on the colorless situation. Assuming he is humoring Finn by looking for a life lesson or quest to earn their way out, he needs something to try. Typically Kurt will pick chaos over “meaning” any day of the week, which puts him at a disadvantage for pretending it’s there. Even assuming Finn is magic and has them under his - perhaps unwitting - control makes a more supernatural explanation than Kurt would like to contemplate, but it’s more manageable than fate or divine retribution or trickster space aliens hopped up on power and fables. Guessing at meaning gives the illusion of productivity, though. There's not much else they can do if driving straight to New York is off the table. 

_There’s no place like home._ It sounds sardonic even in his mind, but he is an aspiring actor and he will rise above his material. He can mimic Judy Garland’s big eyes and look of longing if it gets him out of here. He can sing the song about over the rainbow where the skies are blue in its original key. If he’s lucky – or maybe if he’s good – when he gets out of here he’ll go somewhere better than home, and instead of a Midwestern town he’ll be taking in the bright lights of a big city and making dreams come true while still being in phone distance of his father. He never believed that Dorothy could want to go home just because Oz was kind of terrifying.

_A brain. A heart. Courage._ He tuts the list under his breath. Well, the brain he’s certain he has. The heart he’s less sure of. If he were to ask for one wish granted, one thing to change … maybe it’s courage he needs.

“Are you going to make an obligatory brain joke?” Finn asks at Kurt’s muttering of _brain, heart, courage_ into his glass of warm milk.

“Well, I was until you said ‘obligatory.’” Kurt gives a tight-lipped smile.

“Just get it out of the way.”

Kurt shakes his head. “I’m not going to be cruel on command.” He might have made the joke, but the way Finn expects him to gives him pause. It’s possible he’s been overusing judgmental silence the thinner his own bullies wear him. He tops off Finn’s glass with the remaining milk in the saucepan. “You know, the scarecrow thinks he’s dumb, but he has all these great ideas along the way.”

Finn swallows. “I’ll try to come up with one. I promise I will.”

Kurt nods and chooses to believe him.

A beat later, Finn says, “We should make a fort.”

Kurt tips his head as he waits for an explanation.

“We could set up right here. Well, there.” Finn gestures to the living room. “If we want to do this right, we should build a blanket fort, and no one builds a fort in the kitchen even if there’s easier access to food. The carpet will be softer and we can use the curtain rods and couch for support.”

Kurt tips his head more radically.

“Not that we need a fort, if you don’t want one, but I haven’t built one in ages. You won’t notice the lack of color so much inside the fort because sheets are just as likely to be gray as any other color.”

Kurt realizes Finn thinks he’s being judgmental again. “I’ve never built a fort.”

“Really?”

“I assume most kids build forts with their siblings, so let’s chalk it up to being an only child.” Finn’s hopeful look doesn’t waver, so Kurt adds, “Um, until now. I’ll go get supplies.”

Perhaps living room fort building is another one of Finn’s survival techniques. Keeping his hands busy helps and makes the quiet terror at being stuck here seems like a game. Kurt gathers blankets and pulls the cushions off the couch. They unfold blankets together. Finn puts his height to good use by pining a sheet to the curtains and drapes it over the back of a chair.

Finn beckons him inside once it’s stable.

“Now what?”

“Depends. How tired are you?” Finn yawns and sets of a chain reaction. “Are you at the point where you’re willing to sleep on the floor yet?”

He’s at the point where he’s tired enough to be slow to process what Finn is saying. “I’m sleeping on the floor?”

“I think I should stay here tonight, since we’re supposed to stick together. And now we have a fort!”

“Being in the same place doesn’t stop anything,” Kurt protests because he feels he has to distinguish _sleeping together_ and _Kurt’s idea_ completely. “We could still disappear again.”

“I want to know. If I wake up, I want to know you’re here.” Finn’s shoulders hunch as he asks so he looks like an overgrown little kid. “Otherwise I’m going to knock at your door throughout the night asking if you’re there,” Finn warns.

“What about your home?”

“I already ate all the junk food in our cupboards and we stayed up all night last night, so I pretty much exhausted all the perks of staying home alone. You make me food here; it’s a much better deal.”

Kurt suspects Finn is exaggerating to get him to laugh, so he obliges. Requisite objection out of the way, Kurt breathes a sigh of relief that he isn’t going to be left alone, even if, before the honeymoon, he insisted to his dad that it wouldn’t be necessary and he would do just fine by himself. He wasn’t about to set up house alone with Finn like they were the ones who just got married.

“Hold on.” Kurt pushes out of the fort’s curtain.

“We don’t need more supplies. It’ll be like camping,” Finn calls encouragingly while Kurt raids the kitchen for sharp utensils to create a barrier down the middle, like Kurt still needs to be convinced of the fort idea and camping will sway his opinion. Kurt blinks as he contemplates the entirely foreign concept with stash in hand, to which Finn adds, “You look like Bambi when you do that.”

Kurt resolutely looks at the wall of irregularly shaped objects he builds up between them (TV remote without a single button that turns the color in their lives back on, fruit bowl, umbrella, salad tongs) so neither can roll into the other. He doesn’t know how to take compliments from Finn, if being compared to a cartoon fawn even counts as one.

Finn seems to get the awkward situation he put his former admirer in, as he clears his throat and changes the subject. “I’m glad Rachel’s here, even if she’s not the same. Rachel seems different to you, right? I mean, she’s not quite the same when she’s not constantly announcing her opinions. I haven’t seen her this mellow since she was high on cough syrup.”

Kurt wraps his arms around himself. His fingers are cold on his arms. He sinks lower into the comforter. Rachel’s not the same, but Finn has her here. Arguably a better version of her, providing one less incentive for Finn to help find their way back.

His mind wanders - just a little - to the boy in the fantasy section who smiled kindly at him. Kurt wonders if hope is something he should bother to have here when he's not supposed to exist. It wells anyway. He can never convince himself not to hope. He supposes he'd be more worried about himself if he could. 

“She’s acting more like Quinn. She said she was following Quinn’s advice. It’s kind of the best of both if I have Quinn and Rachel rolled into one, right? No more wondering if I made the right decision if there’s only one decision. She’s not devoted to making me a loser here for the sake of being ‘special’ and she still somehow looks at me like a hero she’s been waiting for for ages.”

The end to the loneliness that Blaine could bring makes for an even more indulgent fantasy than just his good looks and kind personality can offer.

“The one thing I don't get is why she seems so sad here,” Finn continues. “She's built to be here. Shouldn't she be happy in the world she lives is?”

“You'd think.” It's hard to seem cheerful in black and white. Back home he could dress in yellow and pretend. Gray seems so cold to him. If a color is capable of being lonely, it’s gray.

He’s so tired. He fixes the blankets around himself to bring him some warmth. Without Finn’s presence he'd feel even more alone, he reminds himself. No sense in feeling alone when he has willing company happily babbling away about a wonderful romantic relationship that qualifies him for the closest thing their friends have to “it” couple status. 

“I asked her out, so hopefully that’ll fix it.” He waits for a response from Kurt that doesn’t come. “What’s wrong?”

Kurt rearranges the wall between them. He wants to stop feeling uneasy about the peace they've reached, mostly. He wants to stop feeling at odds with everyone in his life. He wants his jealousy over every happiness someone else finds to stop. He lets out a breath.  Out loud he says, “I don’t think I like where I am. Again.” Kurt hugs his pillow. “Better luck next time. Goodnight, Finn.”

Kurt puts out the light. He listens to the room tone and Finn’s quiet breathing as he tries to fall asleep curled in on his side away from Finn. With the lights off it’s near impossible to know what shade the world is in. He can pretend he’s back at home in his room except for the keen awareness of not being alone.

He gives up quickly on maintaining that extra distance that turning away from Finn allows him. They created this fort so they could watch out for each other, and he wants more proof that Finn’s there that huffed breathes he has to strain to hear.

Finn smiles knowingly when Kurt faces him once again. In the dark they’re able to tell each other from the shadows. They can see that the other’s eyes are open across the makeshift barrier.

“We’ll be okay. Think of it as an adventure. It’s wild and unknown but we’ll manage just fine,” Finn says. He keeps his voice low so as not to disturb the calm of the darkened room.

Kurt hugs his pillow tighter. “I don’t want to be here anymore,” he admits.

“Yeah, but I don’t think you liked home that much either. What kind of place would you like?”

“You really created this, didn’t you?” He tries to keep the judgment out of his voice. Kurt skeptically turns his nose up at preternatural notions, but Finn being magic and playing with time or space or the laws of the universe doesn’t faze him. It’s the most comforting thought he has in this place: if it’s Finn’s fault, Finn can get them out. “Tell me the truth.”

“Not that I know of, but I spent a lot of time thinking it’d be nice for things to be simpler. Clear-cut.”

“Black and white?” Kurt asks wryly.

“Exactly, dude.” Finn shares his brief amusement with a laugh. “If you want a different place, you’re not giving me a lot of details to work with. I didn’t intentionally bring us here, but thinking of someplace else is worth a try if you want to leave.”

Kurt considers his options. “Good fashion would be nice.”

“You’ve got some of that now. Right?”

“There’s no variety. It’s not grunge but it it’s constraining. It lacks creativity.” He finds himself talking with his hands even though Finn can’t see the gestures.

“Do I get to have puffy vests?”

Kurt rolls his eyes – another unseen gesture. “If you want, but I don’t see why you would. What’s the point of having a shape if you obscure it? Alter slightly to look more alluring, yes, but not hide completely.” He blushes for saying _you_ when he means _someone_ , not necessarily Finn, because what does or doesn’t make Finn alluring isn’t something he wants to comment on uninvited.

“What else?” Finn prompts.

“Color.”

“Yeah. I miss it too. It makes food taste better. Rachel – Original Rachel – used to tease me that all my favorite foods are the same starchy yellow, so you’d think color wouldn’t matter, but it adds something. It makes it better. Like cheese. Or grilled cheese. Macaroni and cheese. Not like homemade macaroni and cheese, but the box kind that’s so neon yellow they call it Cheese and Mac.”

“You just ate.” He feels the same lack of satisfaction, though. When he's not minding his diet, he and Finn can do serious damage to their parents’ pantries. Kurt’s voice is a soft hum as he continues. “I want … more possibilities, I guess. Whether here or at home, I feel so contained. Possibly outside of here doesn’t exist. We don’t know.”

Finn scoffs playfully. “I’m not imagining a place into being so you can leave it!”

“Imagine a bigger place, then.”

“One with possibilities.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Finn opens his eyes to see if it worked. “It’s pitch black.”

“I guess we’ll know in the morning.”

Kurt peeks his eyes open a few times during the night to make sure the shadow of Finn is still there.

***

Finn dreams in color; he notices it now that everything else is gray. He never thought about it – it never seemed like a detail that mattered – but when he wakes up to pale gray sheets turned into curtains, he knows his dreams are in color.

It doesn't make getting up easy. 

Finn contemplates closing his eyes again and drifting, but he doesn’t have time to dream again, only to miss it. He lets Kurt be so he can enjoy the color a little while longer, and then it’s another day of school.

***

Blaine Anderson, overly-perfect figment of Kurt’s imagination that he is, greets him at the front entrance the next day at school with a bounce and an exclamation of, “You’re still here!”

Kurt offers a close-lipped smile with the little joy he can muster. Blaine is the best part of still being here. He’s too perfect with his Disney heroine eyes, expressive brows, and 50s crooner hair. He must have stepped out of the pages of one of his fairytales that's supposedly true. 

“Still here,” Kurt echoes softly. Kurt fixes the lines of clothes he longs to tailor into something more than standard issue prep. He’ll spend a satisfying evening ripping out seams, then mixing and matching to create something new from the pieces. He’ll use the curtains if he has to.

Blaine takes him by the shoulders and steers him down the hall. “Rule number one: don’t let anyone know.”

“Know?” His mind races to all his potential secrets. Ogling Blaine goes right to the top of the list.

“That you’re new, silly. They won’t remember if you don’t remind them. Which brings us to the next rule: you have to _blend._ Blending in will keep you safe and everyone else unaware. Don’t stand out. Don’t do what you did yesterday.”

Kurt blinks. How does Blaine know what he did yesterday besides ask about gay books at the library? Although possibly that was enough if no one else knows what he means besides Blaine.

“I'm really good at being what people expect me to be.” Blaine says matter-of-factly. “Watch what everyone else does and mimic them, new kid. If you don’t know what’s normal, keep your mouth shut until you figure it out _._ ”

Kurt takes in the sea of calm exteriors. The cordial but not overly friendly greetings. Not a lover’s quarrel in sight or a single flagrant display of affection. His eyes fall on Rachel edging a smidge closer to Finn than the other couples stand and staring up at Finn like he’s as radiant as the sun should be.

“Um, maybe not Rachel.” Blaine steers him past.

“What’s wrong with Rachel?” Usually Kurt could provide a list of Rachel’s offenses, most but not all fashion related, but the Rachel here doesn’t stand out enough to have anything distinguishing at all, good or bad.

“Every time I look at her I feel like something’s missing,” Blaine muses husky and low. “She’s a wonderful actress, but the façade threatens to crack too much. You can see in her eyes that she wants more than she gets. Pick models who are less likely to break.”

He looks back at Blaine. Too handsome and good to be real Blaine. Kurt belatedly realizes that Blaine’s wearing a bowtie patterned with smaller bowties, so listening loses priority to swooning over how handsome his new friend looks. If he's going to have a guided tour through what he assumes must be colorless, fashion-less purgatory, at least he has the dreamiest teen angel as his guide. 

“Are you even paying attention?” Blaine teases gently.

“Fitting in. Right.” Kurt overcompensates for letting his mind wander by nodding enthusiastically.  “I can try that.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning reminder: bullying/non-graphic violence in this chapter

The scrabble is rougher one-on-one. With a gang of meatheads back home, their hands were on Kurt and he was in the air before he could brace himself, but on his own, Karofsky has to work to get enough lift. There’s too much time where he knows what’s coming before he hits bottom.

The landing knocks the wind out of him. When Kurt opens his eyes he sees the sky. Clouds roll in and make a gray world even grayer. He’s surrounded by garbage. It shifts under and around him when he moves.

Sometimes he thinks his life is an extended metaphor.

The situation devolved quickly: a few days somewhere new and history starts to repeat for Kurt. He’s been laughed at numerous times, or outright ignored, and it all feels familiar. Blaine’s lessons on blending are for naught. Kurt has never wanted “normal” things, from ballet to Beyoncé routines to Broadway, and his default is toward doing what he wants over _the way things are done_. The clothes in his closet start in the confines of the unwritten dress code but he knows how to sew. The slightest alteration sends the student body spiraling. He’s not allowed to socialize freely with the girls – his attempts to befriend them only confuse them about his intentions – and he doesn’t fit with the boys but he doesn’t stop trying. Finn pulls down his hand whenever he starts to raise it in class, so Kurt doesn’t wait to be called on to speak.

Karofsky takes Kurt not fitting in personally.

Kurt feels for a way out. He has had enough of dumpsters and bruises that would be purple if anyone could see them. He’s been so contained lately. Unsure of his footing. He’s not the kind of person who deserves to be in a heap of trash.

He gets his hands around the metal edge of the dumpster and grips and wobbles upright. “I did not come all this way to have you treat me like this!”

Karofsky falters in his retreat across the parking lot at Kurt’s reemergence. Karofsky’s Adam’s apple quivers when the rest of him holds still. There’s panic under his sneer of, “What did I do to you?”

“Besides the obvious _tossing me in the trash_?”

And then Kurt looks down. The dumpster is gray and the trash bags are black but he’s every kind of color in more glaring brightness than a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. The garbage that oozes out and touches him is equally bright. There’s a green slushie stain splattered across his front down to his red pants to prove it.

“This is hardly a Technicolor dream coat!” Bright as he is, he’s still covered in trash.

Karofsky doesn’t understand the reference, but Kurt’s insults have never made sense to Karofsky before, and he doesn’t stick around for Kurt to lecture on musical theatre parallels. For once Karofsky looks afraid of him. He retreats at a run.

“Coward,” Kurt snips at his back, knowing he won’t be heard. He shakily climbs out of the dumpster.

Maybe Karofsky won't want to touch him now. 

***

Finn picks at his food. It’s yellow, or it would be if it had color, so it should be one of his favorites. It’s cheese and noodles: it should be one favorite on top of another. He can’t bring himself to care.

Food doesn’t taste the same, and hasn’t since he and Kurt arrived. He tries cake. He tries soda. He tries the macaroni and cheese a second time despite knowing how bland he found it the first time. Futile to expect much from mass-produced food the same as what they give to prisoners – Kurt whines about cafeteria food and then doesn’t eat so much as pick and Finn overheard Kurt’s friend Mercedes grumbling once about disordered eating given how much he eats at home – but Finn is generally satisfied with what’s put in front of them. He doesn’t have high expectations. It’s not hard to meet them.

“Is something different today?” He asks Rachel, who keeps the same level of abnormal quiet throughout his food prodding that she has since the world lost color. At first he thought she might be sick, like she has laryngitis again and forgot to give him a sign. She talks when prompted, though.

“Does everything taste better now that we're together? That's romantic of you to say!”

Finn swallows. It sticks in his throat.

“Something's off.” He punctures the noodles with the tines of his fork.

She schools the hint of a pout away, but he catches it. 

“I don't think it has anything to do with you,” he reassures. “Without you here, it would probably border on tasting like sawdust scooped up with the shop teacher's missing thumbs instead of just like nothing.”

She cheers up a little. “That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.”

Finn suspects she might be telling the truth. He’ll have to come up with nicer compliments. Maybe she’ll talk more if he compliments her more. New Rachel’s company is nice, but it's quieter than he's used to. He can’t find that spark in her that he used to know. He thought Rachel might perk up with some attention and reassurance from her boyfriend.

He sniffs the macaroni and cheese to see if he can excite a difference sense. Rachel looks at him like he’s crazy, although it’s a subtler look than Finn has grown to expect. She tips her head but doesn’t comment. Original Rachel – _his_ Rachel – would comment. Original Rachel would ask if he’s preparing for the role of a slimmer man he dreams of being cast in by dieting, or tell him he needs to keep his strength up for singing alongside her because fainting would take away from her spotlight.

It turns out they don’t talk much without Rachel telling him of her dreams, which New Rachel has never mentioned. School is swell, according to Rachel. So is Glee Club. Nothing is amazing and nothing is terrible. She has no friends to speak of, just acquaintances she offers blends praises of. She waits to see what Finn will say but he has nothing to fill the void. He doesn’t have dreams either, or at least not all-consuming ones.

 “Do you have any plans for Glee Club?” He prompts. She always has something to say about Glee Club: future performances, whose lackluster commitment pales in comparison to hers, the latest relationship drama that isn’t theirs.

“What's to plan other than showing up to rehearsal?”

“Taking over lessons or redirecting them to be about what you want? Picking your own theme for the week? Don't you have something to express that you can't hold in any longer and can only truly be understood through the power of song?” 

“Don't be silly. I completely respect Mr. Schuester’s authority and I would never undermine it for personal gain.”

Finn blinks. That’s all the proof he needs to know she looks the same but she’s not. There’s more to Rachel than tights and headband and a loud voice in a tiny body (a loud voice she doesn’t use). It’s missing. He hasn’t been able to give it to her yet.

He tries again. “What do you want to do when you...” He pauses to find less childish wording but it's the best he can come up to ask, “When you grow up?”

“I want what everyone wants: to be a wonderful wife and mother.”

Finn laughs. Rachel doesn’t talk like that. _Quinn_ does when she spends too much time with her parents. Quinn viciously commits to being the girl she’s expected to be; Rachel has all these crazy fantasies about stuff like a star on the walk of fame and an autobiography before she’s 30. Rachel tells anyone who will listen that nothing matters more than being a star.

Rachel doesn't laugh with him. He straightens his crooked smile. “There's not more? Like, um…” He has no example of dreams to give her except those of her former self and he wants her to remember them on her own. “Forget other people. Forget what they want. What about you? What do you want if no one else’s opinion matters?”

The notion panics her. “I could never be so selfish! You can’t think that of me!” Her voice pitches high and her already wide eyes grow impossibly large as she implores him to accept her pleas. 

“I believe you.” He doesn't, quite, but she relaxes and lets him take her fluttering hand. 

The calm is short-lived. He startles at the sound of indecipherable yelling and metal slamming from outside. Looks of confusion around the cafeteria mirror his. The only yelling he hears here is in organized sports, and even then it's exceedingly polite yelling.

He looks around and sees Kurt’s new friend with the eyebrows and perpetual smile, but no Kurt.

“I gotta go.” Finn dumps the macaroni and jogs off to see what Kurt has done.

***

Kurt trembles at his reflection in the school restroom mirror. He’s just as bright as he thought, painted from head toe in color and topped with neon green slush on his face and down his front. His pale skin shows a pink flush of life. He would have sworn he didn’t have freckles and his skin was pure, unblemished white, but his reflection proves him wrong. He wouldn’t call his lips red without seeing them when they weren’t. He never gave much thought to the color of his hair until it returned from grayness to copper brown. He stares at himself so long he feels like Narcissus about to drown in his own reflection.

He strips off the black outer layer too drenched in slushie to keep on without shivering and soaks it clean in the sink.

The colors don’t fade with his indignation, no matter how he scrubs. Green ice chunks swirl down the drain. His eyes have a hint of blue that proves they’ve changed too. Finn commented once, a year prior, that Kurt’s eyes look like a storm about to occur, and at the time Kurt was giddy at what he took as a compliment from Finn. He doubts Finn will appreciate the storm now. Finn asked him to fit in. To strive for “something resembling normalcy.” There is no way to hide this.

He strides out with his head held high. Even trapped in Finn’s imagination he has some control over himself. He looked good in black and white. He looks better in color.

Heads turn. He is met with stunned silence followed by whispers.

Rachel’s eyes are wide. “Wow.” She stares openly, barely blinking.

“Kurt . . . Kurt, you look amazing.” Blaine reaches out to touch him but stops himself like the red undercurrent in Kurt’s skin might actually be fire capable of burning him. “I forgot about colors.”

Kurt’s eyebrow arches quizzically. _Forgot?_

“How did you do it?” Courage momentarily bolstered, Blaine closes the minute space between them to touch Kurt’s hand, then pulls back to examine his own colorless fingers. If the color rubs off, the result isn’t immediate. Kurt would gladly offer himself up to Blaine’s experimentation; Kurt is too aware of Blaine’s touch and how badly he wants it to continue, and it’s just the tip of his finger. Kurt finds it easy to tune the crowd out with Blaine’s touch. Blaine isn't shocked, like everyone else, but he’s mesmerized just the same.

Blaine touches him again.

“Do you want it to rub off?” Kurt asks when the slide of Blaine’s fingertips doesn’t stop.

“I…I don’t know.”

Finn catches sight of Kurt’s easy to spot Technicolor with a startled yelp. The gray drains from Finn’s face. “Holy shit!”

In a matter of seconds, Finn catches up to all the panicking Kurt has been doing in the past week.

“Lower your voice, Finn,” Kurt hisses, like _that’s_ the reason everyone in the hallway stares. Kurt doesn’t have the patience to sooth like Finn has. He prickles at Finn’s raised voice like second nature.

“Whatever you're doing won't take us back! We'll still be here and we won't fit in!” Finn flings his hands up in frustration. “Why are you doing this? Change back. This isn’t part of our plan.”

Blaine disappears in the brief moment Kurt is occupied with Finn. Kurt looks between the spot where Blaine was and Finn’s movement toward him and takes off in the opposite direction.

“Where are you going, we have Shop.”

“I want to go to Home Ec. So I'm going. I want to learn how to make a pate.”

Finn trails after him. “We’re supposed to stick together. We agreed to stick together.”

Kurt waves a hand dismissively. “You’ll like it: it’s meat.”

“That’s not the point. It’s not what we’re supposed to do! We’re supposed to go to Shop, so we’re going to Shop! You agreed to try and be normal.”

“Finn. I didn’t intend this.” His voice comes out sharp. He ignores his own request for lowered voices. “This is normal. This is what we’re _missing_. Have you forgotten in six days?”

“Normal for here. Fit in. Change back."

“I can’t!” Kurt snaps. One week into _fitting in_ and he is so completely over the picturesque black and white aesthetic even if given the option.

“Why should I believe you when you won’t believe me?”

Kurt whirls on him. “Because this hellhole screams Finn Hudson! You’re so perfectly happy with your new Stepford Wife that you wouldn’t dream of questioning what you did to her to made her more tolerable!”

Finn levels a stern look. “I don’t know what that means, but I’m assuming it’s rude.”

“It means you dragged me through time to the historically inaccurate 50s so you could turn your girlfriend into a robot. God, you know nothing.”

“You don’t have to be so hard on her.” Finn levels him with a look that knows him too well. “All of her bad habits are ones you share. At least hers got _less_ extreme here.”

Kurt stops in his tracks and bites back another robot retort, but not because of Finn. Karofsky takes notice of him stalking through the halls with Finn at his heels, and Kurt’s too bright to hide. The fear he saw in Karofsky when he changed is gone. Karofsky’s eyes on him feel _heavy_. Like he’s pinned. There’s no point in shrinking because he doesn’t blend.

Finn nearly topples over him. “What…?”

“Drive me home,” Kurt demands with his voice low and meant for only Finn to hear, because Finn still has his keys. There’s more pleading in his tone than he’d like. He counts on Finn thinking he’s not fit for people to see to give up his earlier insistence on staying in school as the least terrible option.

It works. Finn puts himself between Kurt and Karofsky and blocks Kurt from sight with his giant frame. He steers him toward the parking lot and away from Karfosky’s too-intense stare murmuring, “You’re fine, you’re fine, we’re leaving. He’s not going to bother you here.”

Finn only pauses for a moment before leading him out into the rain. The drops of rain that threatened to fall when Karofsky threw him into a dumpster turn into a storm. All the other students take cover while they push on.

“He won’t even notice you if you’re gray like everything else. It’s like how a T-Rex can’t see you if you don’t move.”

Kurt steps out of Finn’s protective grasp at the ‘helpful’ advice.

“Don’t you dare take this from me.” Kurt hugs protectively across his arms like he can hold the color in place.

Kurt reaches the Navigator first, stark against the black exterior, and fixes a steely gaze on Finn as he waits for Finn to unlock the door for him. He pushes his soaked bangs out of his eyes.

Kurt shivers in the rain. His hair deflates the longer they stand in the downpour and threatens to obscure his vision again. Finn weathers the rain better than Kurt does, while Kurt’s soaked through homemade clothes and his jacket stuffed in his bag rather than wrapped around him have been through enough today.

Finn takes pity and silently unlocks the passenger door.

Kurt glares out the window as Finn drives him home. He can’t get used to being in the passenger seat of his own car. He doesn’t press Finn to return his keys: Finn won’t trust his motives. Kurt’s feet slam on imaginary breaks the whole way.

The rain obscures everything more than a few feet in any direction. Finn’s brow furrows as they slow to a crawl. He turns the wiper blades up to their highest setting after a moment fumbling with the unfamiliar vehicle.

Kurt’s dad taught him how to drive in this kind of weather – one of the many prerequisites before being given the Navigator – but he offers no assistance. He shivers in the passenger seat and thinks about New York and how nice it would be to run away even though he promised not to. There’s no way to wash away the vibrancy he imagines surrounds New York City any more than the gray rain is washing away his.

“What happened to your jacket?” Finn asks to fill the silence.

“The dumpster.”

Finn takes his eyes off the road. “That’s not supposed to happen here.”

“ _Clearly_ I brought it upon myself.”

“That’s not…I wasn’t gonna say…” Finn falls back into silent frustration.

Kurt raises his hand to the glass. He pictures everything passing through his rainbow filter and returning to how it’s supposed to be. The raindrops taking on impossible colors like a Gatorade commercial and splashing their color where they land until the gray washes away. He tunes out Finn’s silent fuming.

The outside stays the same, but the water that falls from him to the carpeted car mat under his feet splashes faint bursts of stormy blue. The longer Kurt stares, the less he thinks he is imagining what he sees. The drops of water falling off him are turning the car mat back to its original shade. It’s subtle, but it’s there. The car is black and the leather seats are gray but the floor mats have a faint blue undercurrent.

He wonders what he can do outside of his black car.

Finn doesn’t turn off the engine when he pulls up in front of the house. “I’ll see you later.”

Kurt startles at the dismissal. “Are you seriously kicking me out of my own car?” Kurt looks between the car and his brother. “What happened to sticking together, _Finn_? Is that only when you’re afraid?”

Too much practice has perfected Kurt’s barbs over time. He doesn’t know why Finn even bothers to invite them; usually Finn splutters and throws his arms up and then looks sad when confronted with Kurt’s colder side.

Except today Finn holds Kurt’s eye as he says, “We both know I did that for you. We both know you couldn’t ask.”

Kurt takes back his assumption that Finn isn’t equipped to win a verbal fight: all he needs is the truth.

Kurt steps out into the downpour and slams the door behind him.

***

After dropping Kurt off, Finn intends to just stop at his home for more supplies before returning to Kurt’s, but the empty house is lonely and he's still chair-kicking mad. Who disrupts an entire alternate dimension after Finn explicitly asked him not to? 

He feels bad enough about the fight they already had to know he has to let his frustration with Kurt abate before returning and avoid starting another. If he takes long enough, maybe Kurt will go back to normal on his own.

Finn has depended on Puck for distraction before, so Finn invites himself over to the Puckerman house to forget about Kurt ruining everything by bringing color to a world without any. Because it’s Puck, Finn turns the conversation to whether this version Rachel is more likely to have sex with him, or at least let him touch her boobs, since her career aspirations that make her want to avoid something so distracting until after she has a Tony are pushed to the side here.

“Have what now?” Pucks asks. For once in the time Finn has known him, he seems serious.

Finn reruns through everything he just said. “You don’t know what sex is?”

Back home, Puck was the one who explained it to him when they were kids. Retrospectively, Puck’s insights weren’t as helpful in the ‘where babies come from’ technicalities aspect, but Puck knew his stuff, and made sure everyone knew what a sex shark he was. This Puck, with his stupidly normal hair and preppy clothes, just looks confused.

A thrill runs through Finn. His pubescent fantasy of being able to teach Puck about something, anything, first insists on the next words out of him mouth.

“Dude, you’ve got to hear about this!”


	5. Chapter 5

Kurt vindictively touches everything in the house to make it change with him. _Color, color, color, gray._ It doesn’t work every time – Finn's possessions won’t budge from their gray pallor no matter how he prods – but enough changes to make their living room look like a coloring page a child forgot to finish.

He smiles in smug satisfaction at his rainbow explosion. They’re probably normal shades, but they shock like neon when surrounded in nothing but gray. He tries changing the food in the fridge next, in case it wins Finn over with the color improving the taste.  

Partway through Kurt’s color spree, Blaine shows up at his door alternating between knocks and calling his name.

Kurt opens the door to Blaine shaking out an umbrella and smiling up at him, completely unperturbed by the downpour. If the sun is going to hide behind storm clouds, he is going to replace it with his smile.

“I love what you've done with the place,” Blaine teases upon entry, like his presence is solicited rather than a surprise, as he slips past Kurt and begins unbuttoning his coat. He tells Kurt to blend, and yet here Blaine is, reveling in Kurt’s inability to do so, just like how Blaine’s advocacy for blending in halts whenever Kurt shows off tailored clothes that he makes fit perhaps a bit too well.

Blaine takes in everything with wide eyes. “Is all of this from this afternoon?”

“It’s addictive,” Kurt admits. Lighting up in color is well worth the drama it causes if Blaine looks at him with intrigue and desire on a continued basis. Kurt beckons for Blaine to follow him downstairs. “I’ll show you somewhere new. I’ve changed all that I can here.”

Blaine follows down the stairs to the basement with a bounce in his step.

Kurt steps first into the room he has ignored since his arrival in favor of Finn’s fort. He laments his Dior white and minimalistic approach that has never felt warm, even when color is an option – the style he reverted back to after Finn’s and his first failed attempt at cohabitation because it seemed the easiest way to put their failure out of mind. Creating color from gray provides comfort, but there’s not much to work with. He throws open the doors of his closet and pulls out the nearest item – a homemade knee-length sweater – that changes under his hands.

“You can change all of this by touching them?” Blaine reaches for the soft sweater fabric that stays blue in his hands. “But it didn’t work on me.”

“You’re not mine,” Kurt says, and then chokes on his tongue for all _that_ implies. “Yes, though. To the touching. I touched it. That, I, um, that’s what I did.” He touches one of the lamps and the artificial light shines like the sun he misses and he almost knocks it over at the sudden shift.

“Rainbow King Midas?” Blaine teases.

“If only I were a foolish king. Then at least I’d be running something.”

Blaine laughs like it’s a joke. He doesn’t know Kurt well enough to know Kurt wouldn’t joke about how much he craves power over his own life. Blaine hasn’t heard the snips of _one day you will all work for me_. Yet. Kurt absolutely gets the appeal of imitating the mythological king and the hedonistic impulse to be surrounded in all that glitters. To control the world around him, where one touch means everything changes. His colorful knickknacks seem silly now, but he felt powerful at the time. He could see the effect he had.

One touch doesn’t do much to people, though, if the way Blaine keeps poking at him is any indication.

“You remember there were consequences in the story, right?” Blaine asks.

“If anything’s rubbing off, it’s Finn’s obsession with lessons,” Kurt grouses. He didn’t obtain this ability out of greed like Midas did, but Finn likely sees him that way: too selfish to think of the consequences for others. Other people don’t want to touch him anyway. Except Blaine. When Kurt sits down on his bed, Blaine follows close behind. Kurt arches an eyebrow at Blaine’s presumptiveness but he can’t force any iciness to it.

Blaine grasps his hand. “I’ve been here a very long time, and I’ve never seen color. Definitely not like this. Of course there’ll be consequences.”

Kurt’s lips part. His tongue is clumsy in his mouth. After all the objects he’s touched to make them change, letting Blaine hold his hand shouldn’t feel big. It does. Forget consequences. Forget the negative connotations in the word. Exploding with color brought him this strange, beautiful, perfect boy holding his hand, the one good thing about being stuck in Finn’s historically inaccurate days of yore.

“How do you know Finn?” Kurt asks at the reminder that Blaine shouldn’t be here either.

“Through you.” Blaine hums happily on _you_. How did Finn create a boy who would speak to Kurt with warmth and yet not know about creating him? But maybe blaming Finn for their setting is the wrong approach. Kurt has his colors, he has Blaine appearing out of nowhere – maybe he’s allowed to pull this world into being what he wants to be too.

“How are you supposed to know what’s a dream?” Kurt asks. He might as well consult the dream about the subject.

“Are you going to pinch me?” Blaine sways flirtatiously.

Kurt pinches himself despite its lack of success after arriving with Finn, in case he’s dreaming within a dream and will wake up from his back into Finn’s.

Blaine’s face falls. “You don’t think I’m real?”

“Presuming you’re a fantasy is hardly an insult!”

“I don’t want to be a fantasy. I’m a person. I’m real,” Blaine insists. “I’ve existed for longer than the two of you have been here.”

Kurt doesn’t think fantasies are supposed to whine, so he allows that Blaine might be right. He can hear the desperation in Blaine’s voice to be taken seriously. “Maybe you’re a fairytale, then,” he teases as he reaches to reclaim Blaine’s hand. “You belong in the non-fiction section even if you don’t seem real.”

Blaine ducks his head to hide his unfairly gorgeous smile. “I don’t know if I’d call my time here a fairytale. At least not a ‘happily ever after’ one. I’m still not sure what it is. Maybe a ‘be careful what you wish for’ story?” His smile tempers as he looks backup at Kurt.

“This place is what I thought I wanted at the time. Rules or common courtesy didn't protect me and I kept thinking, what if they _had_ to? What if no one could bother me for being different? What if everyone did what they were supposed to, like in one of those black and white specials where everyone has to do the right thing eventually and even when things go wrong they can’t go _that_ wrong? What if it was that simple? I woke up here, and I haven't tried to go back.”

Blaine swallows down the raw emotion in his voice. His tone is forcefully light when he continues. “I’ll prove to you how real I am. Ask me anything. I’ll exchange you a truth for a truth, and maybe we’ll be one step closer to figuring out how our stories fit together.”

At the suggestion, Blaine kicks off his shoes and settles further back to cross his legs and fold his hands in his lap, the picture of perfect attentiveness waiting for Kurt to acquiesce. 

Kurt bites back teasing Blaine that he has permission to make himself comfortable. Blaine has his hand and he's not about to provoke Blaine to withdraw the touch. “How long has it been?”

“About a year. But not quite.”

Nearly a year. The thought horrifies him.

Blaine squeezes his hand. “Maybe that wasn’t the best place to start if you’re freaking out over being here. It hasn’t been a bad year, and you should know that first. I’m safe here. Okay? I’m _fine_. Really. Ask me anything.”

Kurt tips his head. “Were you always this charming, or is it an adaptation to your surroundings?”

“I’d like to believe that I’ve always been charming,” Blaine vamps playfully. “My turn. Do woodland creatures make the adaptations to your wardrobe?”

“I sing and they come,” Kurt deadpans. “I can’t believe you wasted a question on that.”

“We should have a sarcasm penalty! Two truths.”

“You can’t invent rules midway through the game.”

“Ah-ah, there’s not a rule against inventing rules.” Blaine beams at his own cleverness.

“You already believe me more than I believe you.” Belief is slower than trust; he trusts Blaine, but he barely believes they're in anything other than an elaborate dream.

Blaine doesn’t seem to take offense. “It must be my trusting nature. Or how obvious your lies are. I’ll ask a two-part question to go easy on you. What were you wishing for when you showed up here and how hard were you wishing?”

“It's all Finn," Kurt insists stubbornly. “He pulled me along because I was there. This monochromatic fantasy is his even though he denies it.”

“It can't be that you were wishing for him to go away if you're both here,” Blaine says gently. “You came together.”

“No. It’d be _nice_ if we had an uncomplicated relationship where I could want something as simple as being left alone. I don't want him to leave like he did today.” Kurt looks at the ceiling. He's unpracticed at opening up. Blaine’s kind eyes attentively trained on him and the sympathetic tilt of his head are overwhelming.

“Not knowing what to do with me isn't unique to Finn. Or unique to this dimension. He tries. If they gave gold medals for trying, Finn would have all of them. And if trying meant succeeding he wouldn't have play-acted like the Neanderthals I get enough of outside of home. We wouldn’t have fought and ended up… If this place is yours, and you don’t know us, how did Finn and I end up here?”

“You’re not here under my control. Nothing’s under my control, I just exist in it. It’s like I already wrote the code and I can’t reprogram it,” Blaine says.  “I didn’t think I could imagine you into being, unless I’m more creative than I give myself credit for.”

Kurt remembers debating with Finn whether they could have a dream in tandem. If he and Blaine both think they created the other, does that mean neither of them did, or his imagination likes to break the fourth wall?

Blaine traces his fingers along Kurt’s hand clasped with his, endlessly fascinated by him. “I think you’re here because rules don’t apply to you, Kurt. You don’t have limits like everyone else. And when I’m with you I feel like I don’t have limits either. I can be brave. Like you. So in the spirit of being brave . . .” Blaine took in a long shaky breath that didn’t completely erase the quiver in his voice in his next question. “Will you go steady with me?”

Kurt’s speech escapes him. If he’s dreaming, then this will be the part where he wakes up and Blaine disappears. He has been graced in his dreams by the occasional fantasy boy, and he learned the urgency of taking opportunities when presented because no matter how he might wish, fantasy boys stop by infrequently compared to dreams of flying and failing or getting lost in a maze. Blaine’s not supposed to be a fantasy, but the principle remains.

Kurt nods emphatically to make up for his lost voice.

Gratitude rushed into Blaine’s features.

Kurt squeezes his hand tighter. He feels his smile spread as far as it’ll go at finally, finally having a chance at something that seems real.

“This is … the point where you kiss me,” Blaine said in a husky stage whisper.

“Oh!” Kurt has never initiated a kiss before. He’s barely participated in one. He studies Blaine’s lips before moving closer to breathe Blaine in and steel his own courage.

Kurt’s heart has never been so loud. Pounding rings in his ears. Thick, inky eyelashes fan across Blaine’s cheeks as he closes his eyes in expectation. Blaine’s lower lips stick out in a pout as he waits, eyes closed so he won’t see when the kiss finally comes.

Kurt’s kiss is tentative – he hasn’t done this in a way that matters to him and he’s not going to rush when he can savor – and Blaine mirrors him. There has been far too little to enjoy in a place that is supposed to resemble a fairytale: he’s going to make this last.

Blaine doesn’t let him go when he starts to pull back, though. His hand on Kurt’s jaw guides him back for a second kiss as soft and sweet as the first. Kurt refrains from whimpering, but just barely.

When Kurt pulls away a second time Blaine’s eyes are squeezed shut and his lips pulled tight into his mouth as if he can hold onto their kiss as long as he doesn’t breathe out.

“Tell me the truth – did you expect to wake up?” Kurt asks.

Blaine opens his mouth to speak. Turns out color can rub off, a little: Blaine’s lips are stained red.

“Did I bite you?”

Blaine brings a hand to his lips. It’s not blood. Blaine’s gray would be more than skin deep; Kurt doesn’t think scratching it is how he gets to red. Blaine touches at the color and pulls back his fingers.

“You keep looking for the same results…” Kurt starts to tease – as if the color on his lips could rub on and off like chalk dust – until Blaine turns his hand to show golden pink fingertips. The color spreads before his eyes.

“You should see yourself,” Kurt insists. He urges Blaine toward his vanity.

More color comes as a blush across Blaine’s cheeks, faint but enough for Kurt to know with absolute certainty that it’s there. By the time they get to a mirror it might fill the rest of the way in.

Blaine touches the glass that separates him from his reflection with faint color blooming in his cheeks. “I look like me.”

The color fades before his eyes. Blaine furrows his brow. He keeps his fingers on the glass.

Kurt distracts Blaine from the mirror by kissing him again. He tries to chase the tints of gray from Blaine.

Color warms Blaine’s cheeks a second time, golden pink and gorgeous. Kurt breathes life into Blaine's skin to watch the color bloom and then fade.

***

“So it’s supposed to be awesome? And no one knows about it? Why does no one talk about this if it's so awesome?”

Finn frowns at Puck’s mind not immediately being blown at his halting explanation of what sex is and why Finn is excited about the prospect.

“It's like a secret? But an awesome one.” His first time with Santana felt a lot more like guilt than pleasure, but that’s not the message he’s supposed to send. “It’s supposed to mean something between you, so girls don’t like it if you tell everyone. It’s supposed to feel special, not something you blab to the whole school about like it didn’t matter.”

Puck shifts to the edge of his seat at the word _special_. For once, Puck looks properly intrigued.

“Special? Why’s that?”

Finn grins at recapturing his audience’s attention, and with a far less crude hook than he thought he’d need with Puck. If Puck wants to hear about sex as a schmoopy, transformative experience, he can work with that.

***

“Okay, okay, okay, we're getting a little out of hand.” Kurt pulls back and pulls a loud groan from Blaine with him.

Everything in Kurt’s room shines with color. Blaine has a faint glow most prominent at his lips, which doesn’t help Kurt’s resolve to stop kissing him.

“We got a little carried away with the light show,” Blaine agrees. He ducks his head to hide the most dazzling, bashful smile and marvels at his golden hands clenched into his thighs to keep them off Kurt. “Walk me to the door?”

Honestly, Kurt would rather get carried away.

“If I don’t, will you stay?” He blurts. He’s out of his element – he and Blaine have made up for 17 years of Kurt’s inexperienced life in one glorious evening but he has no other experience to his name, and staying the night has implications Kurt hasn’t even got to thinking about – but he knows he wants Blaine close.

“Don’t tempt me.” Blaine blushes with real color in his cheeks. “I should go. It’s late. Come give me a goodnight kiss at the door.”

“I have always wanted to do that,” Kurt admits.

The rest of the house seems cold and dark in comparison to Kurt’s room. Blaine’s hand slides into Kurt’s as they take the steps up to the ground level. Kurt grips tight.

Kurt throws his arms over Blaine’s shoulders at the door. “I don’t want to let you go. The color feels like it means something with you.” Kurt realizes he is lonelier than he previously thought, apparent now that loneliness no longer seems like the only option.

Blaine tips his head up to bump his nose against Kurt’s. “Maybe it does. If anyone's going to find a way back...” Blaine favors Kurt with a soft encouraging smile with only a second’s hesitation to it. “I don’t know how to get back. I’ve never tried. When I came, I tried to fit in, and because of that I haven't changed a thing. You've been here for days and look what you’ve done. That has to mean something. About you. About who you are as a person and what you're capable of. I think if anyone’s going to figure it out what it means, you will.”

“Would you go?” His breath catches in his throat. “If there is a way back, would you go?” He has to believe a year of his life won’t pass here like it has for Blaine.

Blaine looks at the ground. “It’s not a bad life.”

“We established that, Blaine, but do you want something more?”

Blaine shifts. “I’ll take a goodnight kiss?” He angles his chin up.

The diversion works. Kurt bumps their noses again before he touches their lips. Blaine’s hands settle on Kurt’s waist.

It’s Kurt’s turn to distract them by insisting, “One more for the way home” when they part. He could make himself at home in Blaine’s arms. He doesn’t care about the chaos he created around them or his lonely room.

The door is in color by the time Blaine’s ready to walk through it.

Blaine fixes the rumples and once again becomes the picture perfect boy. He’ll fade to gray by the time he makes it to his car. Kurt watches through the window until he’s out of sight.


	6. Chapter 6

“This blows,” Finn whines to kill the silence that greets him when he wakes in the blanket fort alone. He’s stuck with a stiff back and no stepbrother in sight. He suffered through sleeping on the floor and Kurt isn’t even around to feel a pang of regret. He had a good time with Puck, but coming home to the rainbow explosion and Kurt’s refusal to come out from behind his locked basement door dampened Finn’s mood considerably. Kurt isn't always easy to read, but locking Finn out is definitely a sign that he's mad.

Without Kurt around, he doesn't quite know what to do. It’s too quiet, although the splashes of color from Kurt create plenty of visual noise. There is no one to put a brave face on for but himself, but if he puts it down he might not be able to pick it back up again. He always doubts himself most when he has no purpose. He needs a purpose. He's supposed to be a leader. 

“I’ve got this,” he says aloud to keep his spirits up. It sounds unconvincing even to his own ears, so he says it again. “I’ve got this!”

He’s still unconvinced, so he claps and pumps his fist and cheers and attempts a cartwheel that sends the couch skidding and makes as big of a fool as he can so that when he turns, Kurt will be there with his Eyebrow Arch of Judgment.

Kurt isn’t there.

“You’d think with how much Kurt loves the stage he could enter on his cue,” Finn grumbles as he moves the couch back to its original position.

Finn goes to the kitchen to recreate a grilled cheese miracle. The only way Kurt is going to change is with kindness. Food is the first step. He can sometimes get Kurt to open up when distracted by comfort food in front of him. Finn suspects getting Kurt to talk with less of a guarded filter is part of the reason why Burt is so adamant about family dinner at least once a week. 

He opens the fridge. Anything yellow in the fridge stayed gray. Finn finds green broccoli, red peppers, but not a single of his favorites like cheese and bread. Kurt either intentionally left Finn’s favorites alone, or he isn’t able to change them.  

 “Hi Grilled Cheesus,” Finn says to the beginnings of his gray sandwich as he lays it out on the counter. His voice sounds too big in the empty room, but the silence is getting to him. He can't tell Rachel or Puck about how he and Kurt got themselves lost in a place that resembles their home but isn’t and Kurt has since caused nothing but nonstrategic trouble. Talking to his sandwich is like talking to himself but a little less crazy since it’s in prayer.

“I hope you’re not mad at me because I ate you last time and you’ve taken away taste as revenge. I didn’t take you for a vengeful snack. That was weeks ago, so this wouldn’t be very timely vengeance. I'm kind of hoping you don't show up either, so I don't feel bad about eating you,” he confesses to his sandwich ingredients. “But we'll work that out. I know you’re not there and you’re just bread and cheese and butter at the moment but mostly I want to talk to someone without having to pretend I’ve got more figured out than I do. I don't know what to do without Rachel telling me, or, like, not-subtly hinting at me. I don't know how I'm supposed to fix anything when Kurt can't stop pulling focus. Is this what having a little brother is supposed to feel like?” 

Finn sighs as he spreads a generous amount of butter on the sandwich’s upright side. His mom, and Rachel, and Burt, and the rest of the ever-opinionated Glee Club repeated, “ _he's going to be your brother”_ a lot during the week leading up to the wedding, but not what it would mean to be Kurt’s brother. He’s left on his own to figure out the inconclusive statement. That Kurt is supposed to annoy him? That he's supposed to love Kurt? That fighting is normal? That irritation and fondness go together? Finn wishes someone would just give him the answer. He and Kurt have come to understandings before but that is never the end of it, because there are always new misunderstandings to be had. 

He applies a second spread of butter to help with the flavor. “Grilled Cheesus, I don’t want you to appear; I want you to taste _good_. I hope that's a cool deal. That’d be a nice sign that it's gonna be okay here.” 

Finn looks up at the sound of footsteps on the basement stairs. Kurt is as phosphorescent as ever with one hand on the door between the two levels.

Kurt surveys the makeshift barrier that’s littered across the living room floor. “That explains the loud crash that sounded oddly like a temper tantrum.”

“I kicked the chair holding the fort up.”

For a second, Kurt looks amused picturing Finn taking out his frustrations on the chair propping up the fort and then watching with wide eyes as it crashes and the barrier pieces scatter. For a second, Finn thinks they might be okay.

“French toast?” Kurt asks tentatively with an eye on the stovetop.

“Mildly over-crispy cheese deity. Grab a plate. I’ll make another.”

“I’m fine.”

Finn reaches over him to grab a plate. He flips the sandwich onto it with the imitated flair of a master chef. As soon as it lands, it turns golden brown, crispy texture so much clearer than before, with yellow cheese dripping out the side.

Kurt winces out a “sorry” at the same time Finn exclaims, “cool!”

Kurt holds up his hands to prove he didn’t touch it.

With all the willpower he can summon, Finn extends the plate of delicious cheese sandwich to make good on his offer to Kurt. “Go on, it’s for you.”

Kurt accepts the plate like it’s made of glass instead of plastic. He gingerly sets it on the counter. Kurt cuts the sandwich diagonally, the way that inexplicably makes it taste the best, and extends one half to Finn. “Help me eat and I’ll help you cook?”

Finn downs half of it in one bite. “Oh my God,” he moans. His stomach growls and supports his point.

“Yes, you’re very good.” Kurt favors him with the same wide toothless smile and crinkled eyes.

“How is it so much better?” Finn raises the remaining half of his golden cheese sandwich to the sky. “Thank you, Grilled Cheesus!”

Kurt snorts as he polishes off the rest of his sandwich with the smack of his lips against his thumb.

Finn smiles at their uneasy truce to mass-produce breakfast. “Now we know we’re going to be okay.”

“Do we?”

“Grilled Cheesus and I had an understanding.”

“Of course you do.”

The golden sandwich seems out of place between Finn’s gray fingers. He eats it before it has the chance to turn back if it’s so inclined.

Kurt sets out two more slices of Wonder Bread. The bread turns under his hands to pale yellow with brown crust. It’s not a dramatic difference, but any color stands out when all its surroundings are gray.

Inspired by the Wonder Bread and emboldened by their temporary truce, Finn asks, “Do you have, like, black pants and a white shirt? Or gray?”

“That won’t be conspicuous at all,” Kurt drawls, catching on immediately. “Finn, if I do that, I’ll look like I’m trying to hide, not like I fit in.”

“What about makeup? Do you have makeup or anything?”

“Never thought you’d want to hear me say yes to that,” Kurt cracks without a smile.

“You do?”

“Don’t get too excited. There isn’t enough blemish concealer or tinted moisturizer in the world to cover this.”

***

A small crowd gathers at the front of the high school entrance and a knot of worry clenches in Kurt’s stomach at the sight. They pull up to see it’s in awe of Brittany, who is in the same vibrant color that makes her easy to pick out from the crowd and across from the dumpster Kurt lit up when he climbed out of it. Brittany twirls to show herself off for the crowd like they’ve gathered in admiration instead of apprehension. Her hair is a blonde swirl when she spins.

“What did you do? Did you touch her?” Finn asks Kurt as they approach the outer edge of the spectacle.

“I haven’t gone near her, I swear!” Kurt crosses his arms to keep his hands to himself as they move through the part of the crowd. His color is decidedly non-contagious when it comes to people: Blaine eventually faded despite Kurt’s best efforts.  

Finn doesn’t believe Kurt’s innocence when it comes to the explosions of color any more readily than Kurt believes Finn’s when it comes to dragging them into black and white. “Kurt. Can’t you just stick to grilled cheese until we figure things out?”

Kurt thinks of Blaine’s captivation with everything he changes, including his own skin. “It’s beautiful. But I didn’t touch her. Maybe your imaginary, over-simplified world was made for change.”

The crowd doesn’t bother Brittany and neither do the peculiar looks; she’s too busy marveling at herself. There's shock from the crowd and complete unwillingness to acknowledge her from those who shuffle past, eyes averted. She owns it more confidently than Kurt has, but perhaps the dumpster colored when Kurt climbed out of it has something to do with that.

Blaine slides up to Kurt’s side, slack-jawed at Brittany’s spectacle. “You match.”

“Not sure how,” he says loud enough for Finn’s as well as Blaine’s ears. He narrows the gap Blaine left between them so they almost touch. Having Blaine close cheers, if not calms, him. He's careful not to make contact lest he light Blaine up in front of everyone. If the night before is any indication, Blaine will blush with color easily. 

“Do you think Brittany remembers?” Blaine asks. “Like, do you think she also…?”

“You’re welcome to try and get a straight answer out of her.”

“Alright, man, that’s how you did it?” Puck claps Kurt’s shoulder and sends him staggering forward. “You’re a freaking genius! How come the color didn’t work on me?”

Kurt shakes off Puck’s grasp with narrowed eyes.

“What did you do?” He looks between Puck in shades of gray and Brittany in bright color. As far as Kurt is concerned, cleaned-up Puck is no more trustworthy than the one Kurt is used to. The smug look is all too familiar.

 “I left you alone for, like, eight hours, man,” Finn says in a hush. “Normal people would sleep.”

Puck’s pleased grin stays firmly fixed in place.

Kurt’s eyes narrow further. He hates it when Finn understands what is going on better than he does, and that guilty look of Finn’s hints at something.

 “Do you think it's like a video game? Achievement unlocked.” Brittany pumps her fist. “You've reached rainbow level.”

Quinn looks on in distaste as she moves past.

 “It was all theoretical! I didn’t think there was enough information to go off of,” Finn says.

Kurt looks to Blaine for an explanation, but all he gets in return is a shrug and a sweet smile.

“Well, as fascinating as talking about nothing is, Blaine and I have somewhere else to be.” He doesn’t know where or how to sneak away yet, but he wants another moment alone with Blaine, no matter how brief it has to be, and it seems he has a hard time following Finn and Puck in any dimension.

Finn lowers his voice to a whisper meant just for Kurt. “Is that why you didn't want to come out of your room yesterday? I wouldn’t have knocked for five minutes solid if I’d known you weren’t just avoiding me. How did you sneak someone out of a basement room without windows?”

Kurt and Blaine tilt their heads in unified confusion. Finn furrows his brow in response.

“Wait, no, that’s not how time works; you were already…” Finn gestures at Kurt’s color.

“Avoiding you?” Kurt supplies. He _had_ let Finn knock for that long with no answer, assuming correctly that Finn would tire eventually and leave him be. After a beat he softens to add, “Sorry.”

Something suddenly clicks for Blaine and his lips form into an ‘o’ of understanding. “You think sex causes the color.”

“Definitely not!” Kurt shudders at the thought of sex with someone as horrible to him as Karofsky. He'll take a dumpster origin story over anything between them.

“Did you make it real?” Blaine presses.

“I get now why you wanted to do that with Rachel,” Puck commends. Finn shifts awkwardly under Puck’s clap on his back.

“Rachel wants to wait until after her first Tony.”

Finn turns back to Kurt. “How do _you_ know that?”

Kurt waves off the question. “Nothing she tells Mercedes or Tina stays secret, least of all from me, and Rachel should know that. And you should know that it’s creepy and wrong to use someone’s insecure doppelganger who literally knows _nothing_ like that.”

“That’s not… that’s terrible! That’s not what I thought I was doing.” Finn stumbles on the words in his rush to get them out. “I thought it was just Puck who knew nothing because no one’s the same here as back home. Where did everyone here come from if they don’t know: hot tub accidents?”

“Why you and not Puck, Brit-Brit?” Kurt asks. The color couldn’t possibly mean anything special between Brittany and Puck. Kurt has a hard time keeping track of the requited and unrequited love arrangements in their group of friends, but he’s reasonably sure this combination hasn’t even been bothered with before despite how many years they’ve had the opportunity. They're all making a hook up into a much bigger, life-altering deal than it probably is. There should at least be candles if it’s going to mean something.

 “I’m in color because I’m awesome and I know it. That’s how levels work. RAINBOW. LEVEL.” Brittany's ponytail swishes as she skips away.

“I suppose it makes sense," Blaine murmurs and tinges the softest shade of golden pink. It fades quickly enough to make Kurt, and anyone else looking in their direction, doubt their own eyes. 

Pink cheeks betray Kurt as he remembers the evening with Blaine. They didn't get close. Blaine filled in and out of color, but they definitely didn't get anywhere near any definition of that. Kurt wonders what it will take to make the color stick.

Santana shoves past Puck in her pursuit of Brittany through the double door entrance. Kurt and Finn are hardly fazed by Santana’s jealousy when it comes to Brittany, but the other students look on in shock.

“I think you just invented the love triangle,” Kurt says wryly at the couple’s retreating backs. “Fitting.”

The crowd’s attention shifts to Kurt without Brittany commanding it, but Finn cranes his neck in the opposite direction to look through the swinging doors.

“Does only one person change? What girl did you do it with?” Puck asks Kurt.

“Girl?” Kurt lets out an involuntary laugh.

“Finn says it works with girls.”

“Brittany’s going to figure out how well.” Kurt looks pointedly at Finn. “I still don’t exist, do I?”

Kurt gets no response from Finn. It’s like he doesn’t hear Kurt at all. Finn isn’t looking at his best friend when he asks, “Puck, how many people did you tell?”

Kurt follows Finn’s line of vision toward the entrance of the school. Jesse leans in closer than appropriate to Rachel as she hugs her books to her chest. Kurt, keen ear for gossip that he has, strains to listen in.

“You’d look gorgeous lit up with color. Don’t you want to stand out?” Jesse asks.

Rachel hesitates too long for any answer other than yes.

“We could make that happen. Puck told me his secret. We can’t let him outshine us, Rachel. You’re meant to be special.”

Her eyes light up. Rachel knows she isn't meant to blend. She knows all eyes are supposed to be on her.

Finn pushes between them. “She doesn’t want to do that with you. She’s dating me. The two absolutely go together.”

Jesse bristles. “You don’t make the rules, Finn. You don’t speak for her.”

Finn edges between them. “Stay away from him. Please.” He lowers his voice and focuses just on her. “He probably won’t even explain…” He flushes. “I promise we’ll talk. We’ll talk in private, away from him and everyone else. I will explain whatever you want as long as you stay away from him. He doesn’t intend well.”

The words startle Rachel, like she’s never conceived of bad intentions.

“She’s not the only one you need to explain yourself to,” Kurt says, drumming fingers on crossed arms.

“Not now, Kurt.”

“Oh, I think you can put off getting laid for five minutes to explain why I don’t _exist._ ”

Finn tears his eyes away from Rachel. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t talk about gay stuff with Puck because Puck’s not gay.”

“You made up the rules. You introduced the entire concept!” He gestures wildly to the school entrance. Jesse isn’t the only one with a hopeful look on his face as he leans in toward another classmate. Kurt has been in high school long enough to pick up on the signs of teenagers up to something. The glances. The hands they bring to cover their mouths so they don't give themselves away. Lauren Zizes is making eyes at Puck. Tina already has Mike’s hand to lead him away.

“We're making changes, whether we mean to or not, and it would have taken all of 10 seconds to include me.” 

Finn looks down at Kurt in confusion. “I can’t believe you’re mad at me because I didn’t explain how gay sex works.”

“I want you to acknowledge the possibility! I’m not asking anything unreasonable!”

Finn has the gall to look hurt. “Why are you insistent that everything I do is wrong? I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't think this would happen. You can't be mad at me for not thinking. I’m not manipulating my girlfriend like Jesse and I don’t have a personal vendetta against you like Karofsky. I know you're mad I did the height thing holding the remote away and took away _Project Runway_ and you think I’m the reason we’re even here, but you're like, scary-hostile sometimes. I don't know what you want. I didn’t do anything.”

Kurt’s temper flares so hot it looks cold. “The most I can ever expect from you is nothing.”

Finn holds up his hands. “You can’t pick another fight - we haven’t gotten through the last one.”

Kurt keeps pushing. “I’m not allowed to care because it creates a scheduling conflict? What time would be good for me to express a feeling? Do those have to be pre-approved as well?”

Finn pulls away.

“When you want to do something other than start a fight, let me know.” Finn takes Rachel’s arm to steer her away.

Kurt seethes, arms wrapped in on himself, taking his anger and pulling it in. He glares at their turned backs and waits for Finn to look back with guilt to catch his cold expression just waiting for someone to notice. He’ll show Finn scary-hostile. Finn has only seen the tip of how scary-hostile he can be.

He startles at Blaine’s hand slipped into his own, tugging his crossed arms apart.

“Hey.” Blaine waits for Kurt to notice his nose scrunching cutely in muted color. “A missed opportunity doesn’t mean there’s never going to be another one. People make mistakes. Or misspeak. Or forget completely about your existence. Or, you know, have something turn out to be a bigger deal than previously imagined it ever could be. But this is just one moment and there’s going to be another. You’ll get your second chance.”

Kurt looks from Blaine to the mostly vacated parking lot. He feels the heat of his anger ebb, along with some of the helplessness that comes from feeling like literally no one understands him. His disappointment is only temporary.

“Stay with me.” Kurt tugs on their clasped hands. The parking lot is less lonely with Blaine’s hand in his even as the other students leave.

“And miss the bell?” Blaine sounds scandalized for a moment before adding, “Of course. That’s fine. I’ve always wondered what playing hooky felt like, and no time like the present, right?”

“Just for a moment.” He never skipped school back home, no matter how miserable it promised to be with the same stares and whispers and _loneliness_ he’ll get now, but he didn’t have Blaine to distract from literal or figurative monochromatic gray either.

He just needs a moment. Just a moment away from the mundane. Just a moment to breathe in and focus on what isn’t obscured behind gray.

Blaine is far from mundane with his wide eyes and sweet curls and warm hand tucked into Kurt’s. His color isn’t solid, but it’s gorgeous in its flush. Kurt squeezes their clasped hands and gets one in return.

Kurt is equipped enough from hanging out with mechanics to open the Navigator doors without the keys he gave to Finn but not enough to drive away. A few curses – Blaine looks positively shocked – and the lock clicks.

“Ta da!” He forces cheer to cover the shake in his voice from frustration and nerves. He holds out the door for Blaine.

Blaine moves to Kurt instead of through the door. He cups both sides of Kurt’s face and kisses him with a firm press of warm lips that has Kurt grasping for the handle. Kurt recovers from the surprise and kisses back. He’s still surprised he gets to do this. His breath gets shaky from feeling too much that he never expected to feel, or at least not for another 2-3 years.

Blaine slides into the backseat. He holds out a hand for Kurt without a hint of the nerves Kurt feels. “We can’t stay long. Finn will come back for you eventually. You know he’ll worry.”

“If he didn’t want to stumble upon me making out with my boyfriend, he shouldn’t have taken away my ability to leave.” He sounds sharper than he means – the theme of all his relationships. He’s tired of being on edge with Finn. Finn has to be tired of him too by this point. He doesn’t make himself easy to be close to.

“Like something as common as keys could stop you,” Blaine teases. He tugs Kurt closer in the cramped space.

Kurt settles into the embrace more comfortable than he could believe to be true given his own sharp edges. Blaine guides them until they fit comfortably. Of course Blaine’s perfection extends to this.  Blaine has imitated perfection for so long he doesn't know how to be anything else. “You are the one thing I’ll miss.”

“Not a thing,” Blaine corrects. He leads Kurt’s lips back toward him.

Kurt bites his tongue from saying Blaine _feels_ exactly like a fantasy appearing when his psyche needs it the most. Blaine won’t take it as a compliment, and Kurt has bruised enough feelings for today.

He takes comfort kissing a trail of color up Blaine’s jaw. Hands and lips visually mark his affection for Blaine. He sees where his fingers have curved into Blaine’s hair at the nape of his neck. The smear of golden color in Blaine’s skin sends a thrill through him at what they can do together. It’s a little scandalizing considering the theory about how Brittany got her color that he’s not sure he believes given the genesis of his own and his mindfulness of his hands and his hips, but Blaine’s color is beautiful wherever it’s coming from.

Still his irritation nags at the back of his mind, even with Blaine offering himself as the perfect distraction, as even this reverie reminds him of the fight he had with Finn. He pulls away to voice his complaint he can’t hold in any longer. “How upset am I allowed to be that he didn’t even mention…not, like – nothing graphic! – and not, like, a how-to guide….”

Blaine’s amusement shows clearly as Kurt grows more flustered. Kurt’s blushes are easy to spot in a world where red is a novelty. He rubs soothing circles into Kurt’s skin.

“I just want to exist! Is that so much to ask?”

Blaine kisses him with a loud ‘ _mwah!_ ’ against his lips. “I’m behind you 100%. It’s completely reasonable and one kind of desire shouldn’t be more shameful to bring up than another. He should’ve thought to provide a comprehensive view. But you know Finn didn’t awaken carnal knowledge on purpose any more than you intended to turn into Rainbow Brite,” Blaine reassures between kisses to every exposed inch of Technicolor. “Sometimes change is inevitable.”

It’s possible Blaine’s eager mouth on him is even more distracting than his mouth on Blaine. Kurt shifts to refocus his attention on the conversation instead of being swept away by feeling Blaine against him. “Was it inevitable before Finn and I got here?”

“Probably.” Blaine sighs. His hands slide from his grip on Kurt’s shoulders to cup Kurt’s face and wait for Kurt to meet his eyes. “You’re welcome to introduce chaos into all my worlds.”

Kurt slides his thumbs over pink tinting skin and wonders at how much he could.


	7. Chapter 7

Breaking into his own car is becoming a common occurrence for Kurt. He glances around the empty parking lot to confirm it is as empty as it seems before ushering Blaine into the backseat.

After confirmation that the doors are securely closed and locked, Blaine clambers into Kurt’s lap. Blaine starts to flush as soon as soon as they’re alone with charming consistency, and he doesn’t disappoint with the tinge of pink and gold already starting to show in his cheeks.

“Do you think this is getting excessive?” Kurt asks as he angles to tempt Blaine’s reddening lips to meet his own. Kurt would think so himself if he were an outside viewer of his own life, but can only summon mild concern for his deep interest in getting Blaine alone as much as possible. Blaine calms him. Or Blaine sets his heart racing but in an enjoyable, unrelated way. Reservations and hang-ups are lower on the priority list compared to enjoying Blaine while he has him.

“We need at least one more backseat make out session to push us into excessive.” Blaine pauses for a beat. “Did that sound crass? Too much? It was supposed to be cute.”

“You’re cute.” Kurt beams at the admission. He has a boy to call cute to his face, who ducks his head and grins and considers it a compliment. “I’m enjoying you while I have you.”

Too much has changed lately to feel like he’s bound to stay. Color spreads quickly from him and Brittany to a quarter of the student population (although Kurt is firm in insisting it has nothing to do with him – he hasn’t touched _anyone_ who isn’t Blaine). The spread of color in a world that was black and white when he arrived with Finn has to mean something.

The though sobers them both. Blaine’s next kiss is less silly and frantic than the others. “I think you’re amazing, Kurt. You came along and… I didn’t think I missed it until you. I didn’t think there was anything worth missing. Gray seems normal if you stare at it long enough. Maybe preferable even, because acne shows up more when it’s bright red, I never liked my teeth, or the color of my eyes. You make me want to be more than gray. Flaws and all.”

“You’re cute in all shades.” Red flushes in Kurt as well as Blaine.

Just like that, the somber moment passes.

“Hmm. You don’t prefer one?” Blaine teases. He taps a finger against red lips. “Are you going to pretend it doesn’t thrill you to mark me with color? I've seen how you get.”

“I like what it does to you.” Kurt squirms coyly in a move he didn't even know he had until recently. He drags his eyes up from Blaine’s mouth to meet his own. “It’s how you... Everything. I can't pick.” It's not just the artistic streaks and undercurrents, although aesthetically Blaine is breathtaking. He’s like an outline of a Disney prince turned work of art as he's filled in.  It’s also how he leans against Kurt like he's through with supporting himself now that he has Kurt to hold him. How delighted by himself he gets when he catches sight of his own color. The ease in which he moves in his own skin that's not the same as the confidence he projects in front of everyone else. The look of peace that fades as surely as the color if Kurt starts to move away.

Blaine’s pleased grin is only the beginning. 

“So do you want to help me change?”

***

“Invite me over. Make me special,” Rachel demands (not for the first time) after the last bell rings and the students go scrambling out into the hall. She follows fast on Finn’s heels to the auditorium where it doesn’t matter that she never learned to whisper.

Rachel’s persistence reminds him of Kurt’s theory that he gets what he wants here. Even when Kurt screws everything up, it benefits Finn. What’s a little crumpling of civilization in exchange for Finn’s chance to get laid by unintentionally bringing sex education to all teenagers within city limits?

“One way or another, you always want to be special.” Fondness and exasperation mix together like Coke and Mentos in his chest. He can’t do anything but agree when it comes to her. He’s resisted, so far, saying it’s never the right time. At Rachel’s insistence, he explained sex despite his own fuzzy-at-best grasp on it (she made him redraw the blobby figure drawing of her so it’s more flattering), but when it comes to moving beyond theory with Rachel, he hesitates.

“I want heads to turn when I walk down the hall. I want people to see me and know instantly that I matter. It’s the perfect solution.” Rachel has no patience for waiting when becoming special is on the line.

“More and more people are becoming special every day,” she continues when he doesn’t respond, following him down the aisle toward the stage. “I should be one of them. Quinn turned, somewhat, and she’s not even that remarkable. If she was, it would have worked.”

“That’s unkind; you sound like Kurt.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help it.” Those are new words too. Rachel makes herself at home dangling her legs off the stage. “I’ve been good. I’ve waited my turn. It should be me.”

Finn lets his feet dangle too. The setting reminds him of their first date, back home, when she spread out a picnic and wanted him to kiss her even though he was supposed to be with someone else. A private moment in a space large enough for hundreds.

“We can’t do it here, you know. It’s like a rule,” he warns as he moves closer.

“Well, okay. But there are a lot of rules on something we know very little about. I want to know. Actual know. I want to change. I won’t tell anyone if you want it to stay special – I want to stay special too once I change – but I just as easily could’ve learned from Jesse and you have no control of what he does, and I’m just one person so keeping me ignorant isn’t the strongest strategy.”

Finn scowls. “Jesse is going to want to give you a hands-on demonstration.”

“Exactly! And you won’t.”

Finn could kick every chair in the auditorium for the result – Rachel wanting to sleep with him – that he wanted with the unexpected side effects that come with the student population chasing after their own way to be special, trying to spread the color around by hooking up like crazy, resulting in a lot of drama and very little color and even more guilt for his unwitting hand in making the strange world he stumbled upon less pristine. Sex might not do much for color, but drama seems to. Santana turns in a fit of jealous rage that would impress even her other self. Quinn is stuck between, neither fully one or the other, and Finn’s not quite sure how she got there. Artie starts documenting the color inexplicable phenomenon on film and changes himself. Blaine fades in an out, enough for Kurt to tease that’s he’s a chameleon that matches his surroundings and for Blaine to huff that he’s a person.

It’s not sweeping change by any means – not yet – but it’s enough to notice something is going on and it’s not just confined to a few anomalies. There's a lot of jealousy over the color, with some wanting it but unsure how to acquire it, and others sniffing that it's overrated anyway, why would one person want to be so loud? Quinn, despite her faint undercurrent of color, laughs that some people are so pathetically desperate to be different that they've deluded themselves into thinking it's a positive change.  She dresses all in white to wash herself out.

“Why do you want to do it? Why do you want to stand out that badly?” Finn asks.

She hesitates. “I like the attention,” she admits.

Finn lets out a short laugh at her honesty.

“I don’t care what I have to do; I’ll do it. I’ve been waiting too long.”

“You have?” She seemed…quiet, but he didn’t think New Rachel had the same dreams as his version until he came along to remind her.

“I’m not supposed to admit that, but of course I have. Standing out would be everything I ever want.”

***

“I don’t think I can explain it in a try-this-at-home degree of specificity.” Kurt stops the slide of his hands that carelessly teased too high on the muscles of Blaine’s thigh that stretch with his splayed stance. He has thought about it – of course he has, Blaine is perfect – but it’s all been in his mind with no chance of coming true. He’s bolder in his mind. Less awkward. Less completely clueless about what to do when the chance is real.

“How often do I have to tell you, Kurt, before you realize that I’m not from here?” He favors Kurt with a playful smile. “My brother is 10 years older than me; do you really think I don’t know what you’re talking about? What the whole school is talking about?”

Kurt’s face heats the longer he contemplates actually acting on the sexual feelings that have never been far from his mind where Blaine is concerned, especially since demanding their existence be acknowledged in his argument with Finn. He deflects. “You have a brother?”

“Not here.” Blaine waves the question off. “Will I ever be more than a fantasy to you?”

Kurt’s hands don’t ghost through a mirage but slide on solid matter. They leave their mark. He pushes and Blaine’s skin pushes back. Kurt is aware of every part of him that touches Blaine. He radiates more heat than should be expect from someone who is mostly still cool gray.

“There’s never been anyone for me. I’ve wanted, so badly, to find someone like you. And here you are. You are, very often, too good to be true. That doesn’t mean I don’t know you’re real.” Kurt wouldn’t hesitate for a fantasy. He wouldn’t worry about making the right choice with a mirage.

Blaine glows under the praise, gold peeking through gray like a sunrise.

“Help me feel real.” Blaine wriggles until he topples sideway from where they started and spreads across the leather seat, taking Kurt halfway with him, off balance. His hand clings to the back of Kurt’s neck. “I’m so incomplete without you.” Blaine gestures to his faintly tinted body. “Please? Kurt? I want you to complete me so bad.”

Kurt hovers. It all feels very fragile to be not solidly supported against anything, neither upright nor firm against Blaine.

“Oh, okay, I …. Okay.” Kurt sucks in more air. “Okay.”

He knows by now that Blaine is too complicated to be a fantasy. He still grabs at the opportunity like a dream he can’t expect to come around again and dawn is coming too soon. If he only gets his chance once, he wants it now.

“Whatever you want,” Blaine promises. “You do want, right?”

“Too much, all the time,” Kurt quips breathily.

“Me too.”

He pulls Kurt on top of him. Kurt squeaks Blaine’s name against Blaine’s lips as they crash together.

***

“They’re still not the same. If sex led to color, Brittany would have lit Santana up like a Christmas tree by now.”  It worked for Brittany and next to no one else. Instead, Santana turned in a fit of rage. Karofsky literally made Kurt garbage to change him. No, Finn is still not convinced color is nice here.

Rachel furrows her brow. “I don’t see how she could’ve.”

“Could’ve…? Oh. Brittany with Santana. I forgot you don’t know about that.” Again. “I’ll get back to you. I don’t have personal experience with it, obviously, but I suspect it involves fewer pillow fights than I’ve been led to believe.” Maybe Kurt will know the details, or maybe Kurt will do the judgmental eyebrow and get even more mad at Finn than he already is. Not that those are mutually exclusive options.

“I thought that was a rumor Blaine was trying to start.”

Finn shakes his head.

“That adds so many complications!” Rachel sounds positively giddy.

“That’s a good thing?”

“If people are wrong about that, then who's to say they're not wrong about dozens of other things we thought were true?” Rachel claps her hands excitedly.

“I think that's exactly what you're not supposed to think.” Finn’s smile twists.

“Who cares about supposed to? Oh, Finn, this is the best news.” 

“I didn't think we had getting really excited about lesbians in common.”

“I've hated living like this!” She claps her hand over her mouth and looks over her shoulder to confirm no one else heard the act of rebellion. She's too giddy to stay worried for long. “I want things boys get. I could stop waiting for you to make choices. I could have a career! I could.... Ooh, I could be a star! It doesn't have to be a daydream. I could make it happen and ignore everyone who says trying isn't becoming.”

Her whole tiny body vibrates with excitement. The closest New Rachel has come to bring this elated is the day he asked her out. She's closer to Original Rachel than she's ever been.

He didn’t realize he missed _his_ Rachel so much until that same spark is staring back at him.

***

Kurt works his fingers around the bowtie knot. He’s so careful with the fabric to make up for the shaking. It’s just a bowtie – not much of a loss when it comes to coverage – until it comes loose in his hand. Then Blaine is one article of clothing less and there’s intention in his movements against Blaine’s throat. The top two buttons come undone next and Blaine’s polished schoolboy look seems undone with them. Kurt kisses the skin he can reach.

For all Blaine’s insistence that he knows what he’s doing, he doesn’t seem to. Blaine’s fingers fumble just as much. Kurt’s tailored pants are too tight for Blaine to slide his hand down the back of them no matter how his hands get stuck and shove without any give from the material. He settles for patting at Kurt’s butt through the layers.

“Hips up?” Blaine coaxes.

Kurt slides in a futile move that is clearly too advanced for clumsy novices. His limbs refuse to go the way he wants them to. They’re too chaotic for this small of a space.

“Hold on.”

Blaine takes the instruction to mean cling tighter. He holds on like Kurt might disappear.

“Let me put down the seat,” Kurt placates.

The simple task stalls with help from overeager hands that push when they should pull and grab impatiently at Kurt when all else fails, but the seat sinks into the floor before Kurt’s language gets as colorful as the rest of him. Blaine splays across the open space left behind and takes Kurt with him in an undignified move that leaves Kurt squawking and laughing. Knees knock, elbows give out on providing support, and hands fumble as they work themselves together like puzzle pieces. Despite all the potential sharp angles, Kurt settles comfortably against him, lulled by the pounding of Blaine’s heart and moved each time Blaine takes a breath.

Dark eyelashes fan across Blaine’s cheeks. With his eyes closed he looks like a stunning beauty waiting to be awoken. A shaky breath and they’re locked again on Kurt. Kurt moves for his lips.

Blaine smiles through the kiss.

“How are you feeling?” Kurt asks, voice high and flustered, as fingers trace down.

“Good if you’re good.”

“I think I can do better than just _good_.”

“Is that so?” Blaine teases. Blaine twists toward Kurt’s touch and chases his lips. Blaine strains toward Kurt until their lips meet again. He hums a whine when it’s not enough. He hooks a hand around Kurt to keep him close.

“I, uh, I don’t actually know.” He groans against Blaine as Blaine wriggles under him. “I don’t know... I don’t – Let me try?”

Kurt warms his grasping hands on newly exposed skin. Golden skin shivers under Kurt’s fingertips. A blush spreads down Blaine’s chest. Kurt’s lips follow.

“ _Still okay_.” Kurt isn’t sure if Blaine is asking or telling, but he nods and knows Blaine feels it.

Blaine alternates between grins and gasps that grow louder when Kurt finally figures out the front of Blaine’s pants.

“You don’t… you don’t have to…” Blaine groans when Kurt keeps progressing down his torso with nips and nuzzles against sensitive skin. Blaine is absolutely right – Kurt loves seeing what he does to him.

Kurt’s wicked grin surprises himself. When he knows what he wants, he knows absolutely.

Blaine cries out and fumbles for something to hold onto.

The color builds.

***

“But first thing's first: color, please. You want to help, right?” 

“It's complicated,” Finn explains.

Rachel pouts. “Don't make me like the word less.”

“Let me say first that you're beautiful and I love you more than you know.”

She holds a hand over her heart. 

“But…what do you actually want from me?”

“I want what they have,” Rachel insists. “I want all eyes on me because they can't bear to look away. Kurt and Brittany and now Santana have something I didn't even think was possible! Have you ever wanted something with every fiber of your being? So bad you can’t imagine not having it? It's overwhelming.”

He hasn’t, but she has. He’s seen her overwhelmed by wanting things too much.

“What if it's not something I can do for you?”

“Of course you can, Finn, we're in love.”

He wonders who here taught her that new strain of logic. Another rumor Blaine is trying to start? It seems too impractical for this place to believe there’s some sort of special exemption to the laws of probability for being in love.

“How disappointed would you be if you don’t change?” He presses.

“That's not fair. I don't care about potential disappointments when I have the chance to never be disappointed again.”

“That's a lot of pressure hanging all your happiness on one person. If I don't make you special, you'll go to someone else you think who can. I'd rather be the guy you keep around because you want to, not because you think you have to. If you're going to hang your happiness on someone, shouldn't that person be you?”

Rachel opens her mouth to protest, but stops with a furrowed brow while she thinks.

“You, Rachel Berry, have the power to make yourself special. You _are_ special. You don't need color to make you feel that or to make everyone notice. You know how talented you are.”

She blinks in confusion and Finn realizes she _doesn't_ know. Knowing she’s talented is the only thing the Rachel he knows is sure of.

“You're an amazing singer,” he coaxes. He doesn’t know what to do with himself but he knows how to believe in other people. Especially Rachel.

“You can't know that. You can't pick me out of the crowd.  I blend.”

“You don't have to anymore.”

She glances eagerly around the empty stage. It's that look again, the same as when he approached her in the classroom: she wants it but she's not going to ask.

“I'll listen if you want an audience.”

Rachel hesitates on accepting his offer. “I sing all the time when I’m by myself. _I_ want to hear me. I come into the auditorium and imagine what it would be like without the choir and the dancers and the shifting so everyone has a shot at the first row. It's just me. It’s the only way I get away with singing how I want to sing – with all of myself. By myself.”

“So you want me to go?” Finn’s brow furrows.

Rachel grabs his hand before he can even think about leaving.

“Sing with me,” she demands.

His smile quirks at all the memories she doesn’t have yet of them doing just that. “Okay. I can do that.”

***

They’re gasping and grinning and sneaking looks at the other after Kurt pulls away to wipe at his mouth with the hand that isn’t already too sticky and searching for something to wipe it on. He marvels at the new feel of his skin, his own body foreign to him even though nothing has visibly changed.

Blaine is equally enraptured with his new skin, which has changed. He checks his hands and down his torso. Golden sheen. Golden smile.

“There you are,” Kurt teases. “You look so handsome.”

Blaine’s chest heaves. He blinks up in a giddy haze.

“Not my most proper.” There’s not a hint of remorse in his tone. There’s no composing the giddiness out of him. “Help get me presentable?”

“You’re perfect,” Kurt coos softly while fixing Blaine’s rumpled clothes for him.

They maintain touches even as they straighten their appearances, helping each other and getting in the way. Even when Kurt turns away to fix his clothes, Blaine’s hand stays possessively on his back.

***

Finn has memorized a lot of words for Glee Club in the last couple years, but one song comes back the easiest. He starts softly with a smile.

_Just a small town girl_

_Living in a lonely world_

Rachel glows at the realization he means her, pleased to be sung about even if the depiction is of loneliness. Her voice is barely audible as she sings back at him, but she knows the words somehow.

_Just a city boy_

Finn points her toward the microphone in the center of the stage. He keep gesturing until she goes. Rachel’s eyes are downcast until she reaches it and grabs it with both hands.

_He took the midnight train  
Going anywhere_

Her fingers wrap around the stand like a caress. With the microphone in hand, Rachel shows no shyness in projecting to the invisible audience, eyes squeezed shut.

They sing their hearts out for an empty room, filling the space with all the power in their lungs.

_For a smile they can share the night_

Finn raises his arm in choreography he could never shake from memory. Rachel mimics his steps.

_It goes on and on and on and on_

Emotion wells in her when they reach the chorus. Rachel separates the microphone from the stand and takes advantage of her freedom to roam the stage, feet taking steps she doesn’t seem aware of, like possession but she belongs to no one but herself.

_Livin' just to find emotion  
Hidin' somewhere in the night_

He sees the color before she does, blooming as she sings those words. It’s like Cinderella’s ball-gown transformation before his eyes: too fast to process but decidedly magical.

He grins as he waits for her to notice. He forgot how beautiful Rachel could look in color. More solid. Happy to take up space. Seeing her like that makes him want color too. She takes the whole stage, then the rest of the auditorium, with her in a wash of colors. Everything except Finn. 

“We did it.” Her voice is small. She doesn’t believe it yet. She rests her head on his heart after she launches herself at him for a tight hug.

“Let me see,” he coaxes.

She holds out an arm to twist and turn in the stage light, vibrant from every angle. Just as beautiful as he expected – as he knew – she would be. 

***

Blaine wraps his arms around Kurt and tucks his chin over Kurt’s shoulder in a tight embrace. “I love you so much, and don't tell me it's too soon.”

Kurt responds softly, “I wasn't going to.”

“Good.”

There’s a beat of sated silence before Kurt rushes out, “You too! I love you too. God, you broke my brain.”

Blaine’s eyelashes flutter against Kurt’s cheek followed by a kiss. They can't stop: the touches, the kisses. Kurt fears they may never untangle again. Or is it _hopes_?

“I love you too,” he repeats to get it out right instead of rushed. Kurt isn't one to have feelings lightly. He doesn't think Blaine is either. 

“Thank you,” Blaine repeats. He presses one last kiss to Kurt’s lips. “I should go. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Kurt nods emphatically. He keeps their fingers tangled until Blaine pulls away to the door.

With a gust of cold air when Blaine opens the car door, the color disappears like a candle extinguished.

Blaine falters. The impact when he hits the seat resounds with a sickening thud. “Kurt, I…”

The second Kurt lets go it happens. The _second_ he lets go. Kurt sees it all drain away. 

He blinks at the blast of cold air.

Blaine’s voice is thick with uncomprehending tears. “But it... I love you. Isn’t that enough? Why isn’t it enough?”

Kurt reaches for him – to soothe somehow even if there’s no permanence to his touch – but Blaine is out of reach.

He jerks away. “Don’t – it won’t last.”

“That’s not why I – Come here.”

“No. It’s best if I… I can’t.” A rushed apology, and then Blaine runs. 

Kurt stumbles in the confined space that throws his limbs sideways instead of straight on to propel forward with any speed or grace, intending to follow when his limbs cooperate, but Blaine is already gone. 

***

Rachel pulls her attention away from her own brilliant color. “What about you?”

“Me?” Finn falters at the question.They sang the same song. It worked for her, so it should have worked for him unless there's something wrong with him.

Finn forces aside the twinge of jealousy that she’s so affected and he isn’t. “I wasn’t expecting to change. You got what you wanted, didn’t you? That’s what I wanted too.” He presses a kiss to the top of her head where it’s tucked against his chest. “Dating someone special makes you special, doesn’t it?”


	8. Chapter 8

When Finn comes out of the auditorium with Rachel’s hand in his, he spots Kurt sitting sideways in the driver’s seat with the door propped open and his legs dangling out, waiting in the parking lot for Finn to return with the keys to Kurt’s car. Kurt has his arms wrapped around himself in a tight hug. With his drooping hair and glum expression, he looks like he's been on the losing end of a fight. Finn takes a fleeting glance at the dumpster by the entrance. 

Rachel tugs his attention back to her. “But sex later, okay? Don’t think I forgot so much as got distracted. I’m still curious.”

Finn laughs out his “okay” and kisses her goodbye before she bounds off toward home. The bounce in Finn’s step lessens as he and Rachel get further apart.

Kurt is waiting for him in the car, resting his head against the steering wheel so that it leaves an angry red imprint on his forehead. He pauses for a moment, never quite sure what to do with Kurt, and decides on. tapping at the fogged glass in warning before opening the door. Kurt goes from bleary to dismayed in a matter of seconds. Finn chokes down a "what's wrong" for fear of all the colorful ways Kurt will respond that can be boiled down to "you."

“Ooh, she’s going to be insufferable,” Kurt observes with not as much bite as he intends as he nods toward Rachel exiting in her blazing color. Finn has a hard time taking Kurt seriously when he has lines from a steering wheel marring his skin and eyes red rimmed from dozing.

Kurt slides across the console despite how many times he’s scolded Finn for doing the same instead of getting out of the car and walking around. Apparently Kurt can scuff his own car if he wants to. He slips and the car horn blares. “Shit.”

Finn slides in behind him. “First rain, now fog, huh? Did I miss a storm?” The fog is just on their windows, though, and no one else’s. It blows away easily when Finn starts the car.

Kurt presses as far as he can against the smudged window.

Finn’s brow furrows when he glances back at the seat dropped into the car floor. “Were you moving something heavy? You don’t have the keys.”

Kurt steals an irritable sideways glance toward him. One day Finn will figure out when to let Kurt be and when to prod, one of those elusive skills that comes with being family. There's a reason for Kurt acting like this, even if Finn doesn't know what it is. Kurt always has a reason for being cold to keep him away. One day, and until then he makes do with guesswork. 

“I don’t care if we’re fighting; I’m here for you if you need me to be. I don’t have any grilled cheese at the moment, but we can still call a truce.”

Kurt is still curling into the window when he says, “You don’t want to hear.” He rubs at the indents left in his skin.

“I just said –”

“That’s what you’re _supposed_ to say. Of course you said it,” Kurt sniffs.

“Try me.”

He has to wait a little more, but Kurt does. They ease out of the parking lot and down the road toward home when Kurt asks, “How did you do it?”

“What?” Finn briefly panics at getting Kurt to open up and not understanding the question.

“Color. I’m presuming you did that for her?”

“Not in the way that you think.”

Kurt favors him with an over-exaggerated arch of an eyebrow.

“Why do you think so little of me?” Finn asks.

Kurt’s voice keeps the same droll tone when he says, “Presumably you told Puck about sex because you wanted to have it. You weren’t just making conversation. You had a hand in restoring Rachel Berry’s colorful intensity.”

“I think Rachel back home would be offended if I wasn’t dating Rachel here, like I went on vacation from her or something, but getting Rachel here to do something Rachel back home doesn’t want to do yet seems like crossing a line and that wasn’t my goal, you know? This is confusing. One Rachel is kinda overwhelming to begin with. I don’t know. I don’t know, like, anything. All I did was help her be her.”

“But how does it work?”

“Shouldn’t you know?” Finn gestures at Kurt’s color.

Kurt doesn’t respond, unless turning away counts, drawing nonsensical patterns on the foggy window, morose enough to create smudges on his beloved car.

“I just… I don’t know. It was all her. I was just there. I listened to her sing. Maybe she realized how fantastic she is and couldn’t hide it any longer?” There’s a smile in his voice when he adds, “That’d explain you.”

Kurt doesn’t cheer at the compliment like Finn expects him to.

“I can’t do it for me, though,” Finn continues. “Everyone is finding ways to stand out but I don't have anything that makes me special. I figured out what Rachel needed, and you don't need any help, but I don’t know what to do about me.” Rachel loves the new version of herself that he helped her become, but he’s stuck. She glows and he’s matte.

Kurt shrugged. “I thought you liked it here. I thought you wanted it to stay the same.”

“Now I feel like I’m left behind. Everyone’s changing, but not me.”  Finn quirks an eyebrow up. “Not Blaine either?”

“It didn’t work. I’m in love with him and it wasn’t enough. He still … I don’t know why.” Kurt wraps his arms tighter around himself. “I thought I was his ticket out of here. I know that’s not what happened with Brittany, but he still lights up when I touch him. That’s supposed to mean something.”

Finn has nothing to offer but, “I’m sorry” that he fully means. He wonders if Rachel is disappointed he didn’t change with her.

“I think it’s nice you handed Rachel the power to irritate you by helping her change,” Kurt admits begrudgingly.

“I don’t mind Rachel singing. She’s great.”

“She’s a little much and the way she gets when you’re between her and what she wants is the number one problem in your relationship,” Kurt counters without heat.

Finn shakes his head. “Not letting her be herself was. She was a shadow of herself. I didn’t mean to do that to her. I thought she’d be easier like this, like, in theory, you know, if she wasn’t constantly thinking about herself first. That if everyone liked her she’d be happy even if it meant toning everything down. But it just made her not _her_. I like when she talks at me about all these ambitious fantasies she has and I don’t understand her, because I can tell whatever it is matters to her. You do the same thing, you know. No one gets your musicals from the 40s references, but you keep making them and the rest of us can’t separate the chatter from _you_ , so each time you start, I remember how I feel about you at the same time I’m tuning you out, you know?”

Finn’s lips purse into an _Oh_ of understanding at his own words. He takes his eyes off the road long enough to look Kurt up and down. Kurt looks nothing like Rachel – _thank you Grilled Cheesus_ – but Finn sees what’s familiar about the way that Kurt frustrates him. Kurt doesn't always say what he means or ask for what he needs; he's so used to defending himself that sometimes he strikes at the wrong people preemptively; blending with his surroundings lasted a grand total of a week before he couldn't do it anymore; he has an overwhelming need to be remarkable above all else. Finn was right when he said Kurt and Rachel have all of each other’s worst habits.

He wonders if he'd like Kurt as much if he was more like how new Rachel was until recently - quieter and more agreeable, but without that spark that can be amazing or insufferable.

Kurt is like Rachel and Finn tries to not let that weird him out. He likes them both a lot, and not despite themselves, it seems, because he's seen them both try to be other versions of themselves. 

“I get it,” Finn says aloud.

Kurt raises his head.

“You shouldn’t be a shadow either. I didn't mean to make you not exist, or try to make you be someone you're not. Tomorrow at school, I'll explain to Puck about gay sex, okay? He’ll tell Jacob Ben Israel, who’ll tell everyone else. I mean, I’ll have to figure it out first, because it’s not really something I think about, but after that….”

Kurt laughs and fights back tears at the same time. “You realize there's – categorically speaking, there’s not really gay sex or straight sex, there’s – well, I guess there’s one kind of straight sex, but there’s very little that gay people can do, sexually, that straight people can't.” Color makes it so easy to tell when he blushes. His high-pitched voice squeaks on _sex_ each time he says it.

“Oh, cool, I never really thought of it like that.” Finn grins through the awkwardness. He waits for Kurt to look up at his crooked smile. “I'll explain that gay people exist and can have sex, and relationships, and ... And brothers. Okay?”

“Brothers sounds nice. It's not like it works, but....” Kurt swallow his cloudy look in exchange for a tentative smile. "It doesn't work but it's a nice gesture.”

"It still matters. I'll make it right." It feels great to have Kurt smiling at him. Kurt’s smile will make up for the embarrassment. Finn will work past his nervousness about changing the world they were dropped into to do the right thing. With that simple resolve he feels like a weight on his chest has been lifted. “I’m gonna hug you when I’m not driving.”

Kurt chokes back a laugh. “You sound like Rachel.”

Finn doesn’t notice the changes to street at first. Pavement is always black. But along the black pavement and gray sidewalks there’s a cluster of pink flowers or a tree. Foliage and whole houses have turned. He misses a bright red stop sign in surprise.

“Look at the trees,” Finn instructs like an awe-struck child confronted with his favorite animal at the zoo. He nudges Kurt without taking his eyes away. He almost forgot.

“Look at you! No, don’t –” Kurt grabs at the wheel. He holds it steady until Finn has the sense to slam on the breaks. Every part of him that he can see is in color.

“I didn’t even do anything!” Finn laughs in relief. He turns his hands over. “Is it possible to miss yourself?” He pulls down the visor to check on his reflection in the mirror.

Kurt puts the car in park and grins so wide his teeth are visible.

Finn looks behind them. Everything along the road that was once gray is a vibrant color.

They tumble out of the car.

“It’s not the same road, is it?”

“Oooh, it’s… it’s home! You got us home!”

“I didn’t do anything!” Finn repeats but he tightens the giddy hug Kurt pulls him into to settle Kurt’s bouncing.

The color is back. It’s not just them, it’s everything. There’s not a single spec of gray that isn’t intended to be that way.

“You were right: we got ourselves out. You realize this makes you Dorothy and we’re back to my original theory.” Kurt grins manically against Finn’s shoulder.

 “It really was my fault, then.”

“It was a team effort.” Kurt laughs as he looks around. “Has Lima always been so ugly? It’s really obvious right now. I made it better in my memory, didn’t I? I’m not immune to nostalgia, even for somewhere that made me so miserable.”

The houses are fully in color, but they vary in degrees of imperfection, some gardens uncared for and running wild or wilting. The flaws stand out more vividly than Finn recalls.

“It’s got potential. Do you think it’ll fade? It doesn’t stick with Blaine.”  Finn’s grin falters as soon as he says the name. “I’m sorry about Blaine.”

“He’ll be fi….” Kurt stiffens in Finn’s arms. Finn realizes before Kurt that Blaine won’t he here.

Kurt is out of Finn’s arms again before Finn can blink. Kurt takes of running down the road they came, calling for Blaine and wearing himself out that much faster, although Finn could tell him it’s not the same road anymore. Walking back won't take them to where they came from. 

***

It’s dusk when he finds Kurt miles from where they started, panting with his head between his knees and hands massaging his worn feet. His bangs hang in his eyes.

“I know you’re not keen to be back where we started and time away probably hasn’t made you like Lima any more than you did, but I’ll be here for you. I’ll have your back. We’ll make this a good place together. We’re good at throwing the whole town into chaos. We can do it again. It might even be fun.”

Kurt takes a shuddery breath.

“It’s - going - to - get dark - again. All the - colors - will fade.” Kurt’s gasps for air make his words barely there. “What’s the - point - if it’s going to be pitch black?”

Finn drops to his side. “What’s the saying in that show Rachel has a poster of on her wall? The sun’ll come out when it wants to?”

“Tomorrow,” Kurt corrects.

“Even better.” He smiles encouragingly. “We can count on it.”

“Bet your bottom dollar.”

“What about my bottom?”

Kurt chokes a laugh. “It means – ”

“There’s that smile.”

Finn’s smarter than he gives him credit for. Kurt tries to keep it from fading. “I can't believe you came all this way after me. Don't your feet hurt?”

“Duh, yeah. We're going to be brothers. I'm going to look out for you, little bro. That doesn’t end just because we’re back now.”

Tears soaked through the shoulder of Finn’s shirt. Finn held him tighter. Finn has the version of Rachel he loves the most, but Blaine wasn’t a shadow of anyone that he knows. He seemed to exist in the once colorless world but belong with them.

“You’ll find a way to bring him here. Or he will. He changes when you’re not around, you know.”

Kurt lifts his head in interest.

“He flickers in and out. Like the other day when Mercedes gave him a compliment. It’s most obvious when he’s near you, but if his color is wholly dependent on reacting to you then of course it won’t stick. He’ll do it on his own. You know he’ll want to get back to you.”

“No one wants to go to _Kansas_.” Kurt huffs. “Or Ohio. Why did I even want to come back to this miserable place?”

“I could just keep driving until we hit New York? To prove its still there. We can’t know without experiencing it for ourselves. We have to check.” Finn favors him with a lopsided, tentative smile. 

"No, we're going back. I'm not done with it yet.” Kurt unfolds from his crouched position hugging his knees and Finn’s shoulder with a toss of his drooping bangs. “I didn't put up with an uninspired color palette for weeks to feel unwelcome when I got home.” 

Finn grins broadly. “Okay, the. Let’s go home.”

Kurt accepts Finn’s hands up and the other arm wraps around in a sideways hug.

***

Time moves differently, it seems, since upon their return they discover that they’re almost back where they left off. Their parents scold them for a few unexcused absences from school during the honeymoon and the only justification Finn and Kurt have is that they were together.

Finn waits all of 15 minutes after their return and the subsequent lecture before he calls Rachel to see how she is and if she’s still how he remembers and spends the next 30 minutes listening to her describe, in detail, the roles she would play in _A Chorus Line_ in order of preference before concluding she’d rather have a show with one single, complex female star. Finn stops listening to the words he can’t follow after a while, but he enjoys the sound of her voice.

Finn reemerges and Kurt looks away from where he’s tucked into his dad’s embrace long enough to smile.

“Hey, Mom, can Kurt be grounded at our house?”

The response is three identical looks of confusion.

“We could build a fort? It’ll be fun. But not like the kind of fun we’re not supposed to have because we’re grounded, because we’re going to live together anyway.”

While Kurt is intrigued by the suggestion, his dad remains unimpressed. “Did the camaraderie happen before or after disappearing for days with no explanation? We’re not rewarding you for getting in trouble.”

 “But _maybe_ for getting along,” Carole amends. “No video games.” It’s supposed to be a compromise, but Kurt breathes _thank you_ in response.

The Hummel-Hudsons move into a house big enough for the whole family shortly after Finn and Kurt return. Kurt thinks fleetingly that the new house won’t match the doppelgänger house he turned to color, where he fell in love with Blaine, but he doesn’t put up a fight when it’s time to move on. He and Finn build a fort once again to keep with tradition for their first night in the new place and don’t bother constructing a barrier between them. After that, Kurt adjusts to living next to someone instead of his secluded reign under the house, as their new home has their rooms side by side. Carole questions whether they go through an unhealthy amount of warm milk in their evening chats.

Months later, on a particularly trying day, Kurt finds a bowtie under the backseat of his car. It's all shades of gray. He can't remember what it was supposed to be or if it was actually gray when Blaine lit up in color under his hands. All of his attention had been on Blaine, and maybe on getting Blaine’s clothes off. The shades of gray don’t change under his touch.

He pockets the bowtie. He keeps it with him, switched from pocket to pocket or tucked close to his skin. He has the bowtie to remind him it wasn't a dream. Blaine wasn't an elaborate fantasy he constructed when he was too lonely to bear. They had something real. He can’t convince himself to give up hope.

It turns out moving only delays the reunion.

There’s a series of adamant knocks at the door one early morning when everyone else in the Hummel-Hudson household is asleep, so Kurt resigns himself to answering it. Kurt opens the door to an unexpected sight. Hazel eyes. Pleased grin. Pleased everything, judging by his rocking and the ta-da gesture he holds his arms in, waiting for Kurt to rush into them, a cheeky smile ready for acknowledgment of his own cleverness.

“Oh, there you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”


End file.
